Jean-Michel Carré

Documentary charting the rise of Chinese art following the death of Mao, and how some artists embraced Western styles while other critiqued it by hijacking communist propaganda.

The Putin System is a documentary chronicling Putin’s rise to power in Russia along with the implications for ordinary Russian people. Russia is once again flexing its muscles. This time its weapons are not the Red Army or its nuclear arsenal, but the huge energy resources lying under the Siberian tundra. Vladimir Putin is the man responsible for the reemergence of Russia as a global power, but how much is really known about him and his ascendance? This film explores his journey to the highest echelons of the Kremlin and contextualizes his rise against a newly belligerent Russia nostalgic for the past glories of the Soviet empire. This investigative documentary covers 30 years in the history of Russia through the personal history of Vladimir Putin: a man who has single-mindedly played all the rules of the game to reach the throne of power.

Stress, harassment, violence, depression and suicide are the themes the media evoke with increasing frequency when it comes to the world of work. Jean-Michel Carré spent over a year conducting a basic investigation into how the French relate to work and the way it is organized by new management methods. The film seeks to gauge the cost in pain or pleasure when an employee manufactures, resists, creates, finds fulfilment or breaks down.

Dominique Bazin is a 40-year-old woman, business manager, married to Camille, English teacher. They have three children, including an infant. Dominique, a modern day superwoman, divides her time between her lover Maxime, her work meetings and her family life. Camille is a perfect housekeeper and a caring father, who unknowingly suffers from his routine lifestyle.

The idea of the current project was born during the making of the long documentary “Charbons Ardents” which dealt with the present-day struggle of a group of coal miners who had bought out their mine and become its sole owners. These miners accepted an offer put to them by the director Brendan Wheatley, to create an opera from the start of their adventure. The film will follow the creation of this new type of opera where two worlds, that of miners and artists come together to recreate the battle for Tower Colliery.

In 1994, an economist decision by British Coal to close "Tower Colliery" in Aberdare (South Wales), convinced its miners boasting a generationally long history of political activism, that what they had was worth fighting for. In unanimous vote to buy out the company, every miner pledged 8,000£, many relinquishing severance pay. Then union leaders, Tyrone O'Sullivan and a few other miners, decided to become businessmen.

A misanthropic Parisian street punk learns some difficult lessons after being captured for assaulting and robbing a man in this interesting French drama. This has not been the first time young Denis Lavant has been in trouble, and this time the judge sentences him to the Coral, an experimental open community founded in 1975 by Claude Sigala, in the wilderness of the Camargue. There he encounters a group of inmates just as neurotic and messed up as he is.

A misanthropic Parisian street punk learns some difficult lessons after being captured for assaulting and robbing a man in this interesting French drama. This has not been the first time young Denis Lavant has been in trouble, and this time the judge sentences him to the Coral, an experimental open community founded in 1975 by Claude Sigala, in the wilderness of the Camargue. There he encounters a group of inmates just as neurotic and messed up as he is.

This documentary follows a number of French women prisoners during the time of their imprisonment and after their release. Many of them are "in" for minor drug and prostitution-related offenses, and at least half of them are HIV positive. One woman promises she will kill herself before her beauty fades from the AIDS syndrome: two years later the filmmaker captures her, wan and wasted, but out of prison. Most of these women have grave difficulties finding work or housing when they are released, and are forced to resort to the same desperate measures that got them incarcerated in the first place.

Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.

A contemporary scenario, in which American journalist Doug Ireland visits Europe and meets an oppressed young Arab man, is played against the celebrated story of Emperor Hadrian’s relationship with his favourite Antinous.

"Your Child Interests Me" - analyzes the ideologies, the stages and the political choices which led to the contemporary and dominant concept of education.

Freetown Christiania, also known as Christiania, is an intentional community and commune of about 850 to 1,000 residents, covering 7.7 hectares (19 acres) in the borough of Christianshavn in the Danish capital city of Copenhagen. Christiania has been a source of controversy since its creation in a squatted military area in 1971. Its cannabis trade was tolerated by authorities until 2004. Since then, relations between Christiania and Danish authorities have been strained.

A César nominated short drama looking at the impact of prison life on an incarcerated nine year old boy.

A César nominated short drama looking at the impact of prison life on an incarcerated nine year old boy.

césar nomination 1977

A remarkable documentary that delves deep into the mysterious and murky circumstances surrounding the Kursk submarine sinking.