Pierre Lhomme

Posthumous portrait of Chris Marker, the elusive French filmmaker- essayist, traveller, photographer and cat-lover. Two filmmakers, Jean-Marie Barbe and Arnaud Lambert, propose a chronological journey through his thoughts and cinematographic work: from the cartography of new political utopia in the 1950s, from Siberia to La Habana, to its relentless defeat, starting with Chile; from his review of cinéma-verité to the great television experience in "L'Héritage de la chouette", which traces a journey through classical Greece, organized into twelve words.

In this documentary, produced by Philippe Quinconneau for StudioCanal, editor Françoise Bonnot, actor Jean-Pierre Cassel, composer Éric Demarsan, writer and filmmaker Philippe Labro, cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier share insights and anecdotes about Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 film ARMY OF SHADOWS.

L'essence des formes (The Essence of Forms), a documentary from 2010 in which collaborators and admirers of Bresson’s, including actor François Leterrier and director Bruno Dumont, share their thoughts about the director and his work.

The winner of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.

Industrious accountant David Martinaud claims to be visiting his parents every weekend, but it's merely a cover for the labor-intensive refurbishing of his country cottage. The reason for David's secrecy is that his childhood crush, Lise, lives nearby, and, although she's married, he still believes they'll get together. His devotion to the idea borders on mania, and, when Lise's husband is accidentally killed, he quickly spirals out of control.

In the countryside near Normandy's beaches lives Marie, unhappy. It's 1945, she's married to Jérôme, a somewhat fussy milquetoast, diffident to the war around him and unwilling to move his wife to Paris, where she longs to live, shop, and party. A German outfit is bivouacked at Jérôme and Marie's crumbling château because its commanding officer is pursuing Marie. She's also eyed by a French spy working with the Allies as they plan D-Day. He woos her (posing to the Germans as her brother) and, in his passion, forgets his mission. Heroics come from an unexpected direction, and Marie makes her choice.

April 1957: Rational engineer Faber's plane crashes in Mexico, where he learns that he became a father in 1938. He takes a ship from NYC to France and meets cute, young Sabeth. Is it fate?

A neurosurgeon with a cheating wife takes an amnesiac into his home and conditions him to believe that the cheating wife is his own and to take the "appropriate" action.

Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.

Famed swordsman and poet Cyrano de Bergerac is in love with his cousin Roxane. He has never expressed his love for her as he his large nose undermines his self-confidence. Then he finds a way to express his love to her, indirectly.

The life of Camille Claudel, a French sculptor who becomes the apprentice of Auguste Rodin and later his lover. Her passion for her art and Rodin drive her further away from reason and rationality.

Mr. Freedom, a bellowing good-ol'-boy superhero decked out in copious football padding, jets to France to cut off a Commie invasion from Switzerland. A destructive, arrogant patriot in tight pants, Freedom joins forces with Marie Madeleine to combat lefty freethinkers, as well as the insidious evildoers Moujik Man and inflatable Red China Man, culminating in a star-spangled showdown.

After his lover rejects him, Maurice attempts to come to terms with his sexuality within the restrictiveness of Edwardian society.

While visiting her sister in Paris, a young woman finds romance and learns her brother-in-law is a philanderer.

Pierre Gastié-Leroy is the son of a wealthy director of a factory of weapon manufacturing. Despite his parents, two generous uncles and a bishop godfather who try to inculcate him the rigid values of his social level, Pierre is a dreamer, antimilitaristic, social educator who dreams of saving three thugs, his "little guys" at the limit of delinquency. After several resounding failures that sent him to prison, Pierre is ordered by his father to join his factory to direct the social service. Tired of the venality of his father and the foolishness of the "little guys", Pierre hires them at the factory...

Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.

Free-lance undercover agent Coplan receives a phone call from an old girlfriend in Turkey. The panic-stricken woman gives sketchy details of a plot that threatens world security. When Coplan arrives, he is told the woman has been killed, and the trail of the murderer leads to her mad-scientist brother.

In Lyon, where many are unemployed, Marie is a prostitute who loves her work: she's thoughtful and exuberant toward clients old and young, slim or flabby. One night, a homeless man sleeps in the foyer of her apartment house; she gives him a hot meal, then a place on the floor to sleep by her radiator, then she offers herself. She falls in love, giving him new life, clothes, a place to live. When he grouses that he must bar hop while she uses the flat for her work, she finds them a larger flat. He grows restless, seducing a manicurist and pressing her to prostitution. He's arrested for procuring, so Marie must decide what to do; he, too, must face the consequences of his choices.

Seven directors each dramatize one of the seven deadly sins in a short film. In "Anger," a domestic argument over a fly in the Sunday soup escalates into nuclear war. In "Sloth," a movie star would rather pay someone to tie his shoe than bend over to do it himself, and he can't be bothered to accept a starlet's sexual favors. In "Gluttony," a peasant family on its way to the funeral of a relative who died from indigestion stops regularly to eat and drink en route, arriving in time to eat some more. In "Greed," a high-class prostitute refunds the price of a cadet's lottery ticket. In "Pride," an unfaithful wife finds reason to reform. And so on through lust and envy.

Charlie (Guy Marchand) returns home after being declared legally dead to reclaim his wife Georgia (Caroline Cellier) and cash in on a lucrative life insurance policy in this shadowy drama. He finds Georgia is married to the crooked cop William (Niels Arestrup), who has his eye on the insurance money. Antihero Charlie and the villainous police inspector head towards an inevitable confrontation, while Georgia is caught in the middle.

L'Etat Sauvage is based on the novel by Georges Conchon which won the highly esteemed Prix de Goncourt. The story chronicles the mindless racism of both the departing French colonial overlords and the emergent black Africans in a newly emerging African state. Laurence (Marie-Christine Barrault) suffers the outrage of her white acquaintances, including her former lover Gravenoir (Claude Brasseur) and her ex-husband Avit (Jacques Dutronc), for her affair with Patrice Doumbe (Doura Mane), an official in the new government. He in turn is ridiculed by his fellow cabinet ministers for stepping out with a white woman. The vilification escalates to such a point that Patrice is brutally murdered, and Laurence barely escapes the country alive, with the help of her ex-husband Avit.

Three women live together in an old rectory on the seashore. Alda lends her body to a string of carnal relationships but never commits her feelings. Olga, the elder sister, has opted for a reclusive life as the soul of the household. Her daughter, Sigga, is a young adolescent. The house harbors a finely balanced marriage between desire and memory—until Olga’s destiny tips the scales.

In the north of France, the life of a nice family of marginalized.

Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.

Aimless young Alexandre juggles his relationships with his girlfriend, Marie, and a casual lover named Veronika. Marie becomes increasingly jealous of Alexandre's fling with Veronika and as the trio continues their unsustainable affair, the emotional stakes get higher, leading to conflict and unhappiness.

A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version. Then, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.

Anne divides her time between her children, a 16-year-old son and twins Lili and Lolotte and her work as an editor. Her life is turned upside down by the reappearance on the scene of Arthur, one of her first loves, whom she never wanted to see again. He doesn't know that he is the father of the twins but he is determined to win Anne over. The trouble is, she is surrounded by men desperate for her hand and thinks she is in love with one of them.

A married couple is having sexual difficulties. The husband acquiesces in his wife's having a lover who visits her every Friday. The lover participates in a collective living arrangement, where sex as well as household chores are shared. Thinking that they will benefit from a similar scheme, the couple starts their own collective. However, the wife dislikes it when her husband begins to spend time with a younger woman in the collective, and the collective frowns on her having an outside relationship (her Friday lover).

Victor Valance, an absent father and gambler, works with shady casino operations abroad. When he returns to Paris in need of money, he plans to take advantage that Pauline, his eldest daughter now fully responsible for the whole family, has begun to work for the Ministry of Finance. Pauline thwarts his new projects but when she realizes gangsters are looking for Victor she will put her life at risk to help him and save their family.

Exercise in Direct Cinema shows Pierre Lhomme working with an adapted Eclair camera. Shot as a 'master class' project by a film school, we see Lhomme tethered to his sound recordist and boom man during filming. Lhomme wore headphones to hear monitor the sound, while keeping one eye on the viewfinder and the other open to judge action on the fly.

Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.

A collection of sketches that tells the story of prostitution through the ages.

In North Africa, a father and his illegitimate son are in love with the same woman.

A sleeping car employee seeking a well-deserved rest is prevented from doing so by the crowing of his neighbor's rooster. Just as he's about to settle the score, he's presented with a gift: a rubber band around the annoying bird's beak temporarily puts an end to its vocalizations. But the animal can't be left alone, and Pierre has to take it with him on his nocturnal journeys: you can imagine the disturbance it can cause when, after being thrown out of a wagon window, it lands in the next van full of pheasants. The whole little world spills out onto the train, and the conductor is not at all pleased! Pierre manages to get a young passenger to assume ownership of the rooster, but not for long. Every time Pierre tries to get rid of it, it somehow comes back to him.

A former hero of the French anti-Nazi resistance is approached by old comrades to lead a financially struggling liberal newspaper. Initially reluctant, she takes on the challenge, mortgaging her house to keep it afloat. As conservative forces intensify their opposition, she is eventually forced to sell the paper, seeing it as a personal failure.

Muriel is a shy woman who bluffs and blusters around in order to hide her shyness and to protect her loneliness, even though she longs wistfully for a companion of some sort. She has been lonely so long that now she is an old maid and has never been wooed. In this gentle French film, Muriel gets a glimpse of romance when Gabriel walks into the seaside hotel she is vacationing in. His car has broken down, and he has to stay there for a few days while it is repaired. Hers is the only dinner table with room at it, and Gabriel cannot prevent himself from charming women. She is stiff with him at first, but soon they develop a friendship.

Over the course of one night, a gang of twelve criminals carry out a commando-like raid on a small town.

A British family is trapped between culture, tradition, and the colonial sins of the past.

When her husband's arrest leaves her penniless, a woman accepts an invitation to move in with a strange couple.

The charismatic, surly son of a wealthy industrialist, Clément, leads a double life as a member of a right-wing extremist organization. When he’s ratted out after a failed assassination attempt on a prominent politician, Clément and his long-suffering wife Anne flee Paris to the idyllic country home of his childhood friend, pacifist print-maker Paul. As affection blossoms between Paul and Anne, the emotional, as well as political tensions, soar and eventually explode.

Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.

A documentary look at striking workers in a textile plant in Besançon, France, centering on interviews with workers about their motivations for becoming involved with the union and the struggles of their day to day life.

His wife having recently died, Thomas Jefferson accepts the post of United States ambassador to pre-revolutionary France, though he finds it difficult to adjust to life in a country where the aristocracy subjugates an increasingly restless peasantry. In Paris, he becomes smitten with cultured artist Maria Cosway, but, when his daughter visits from Virginia accompanied by her attractive slave, Sally Hemings, Jefferson's attentions are diverted.

An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI to investigate a garbled report from the resistance about a bomb which the departing Germans have set to blow up a weapons cache.

The mistress of a wealthy man misses material comforts when she leaves him for a younger lover.

A disturbed young woman is kept prisoner in a castle by her aunt for her money. The game-keeper, her guardian, tries to rape her but she escapes. In her flight she meets a man also running away, from two killers.

On images of the Tuileries Gardens, Marguerite Duras recalls Césarée, an ancient destroyed city.

Catherine Varlin's 27-minute Playtime in Paris (1962) is almost a practice run for Le joli mai, a sampling that starts in a classroom and then observes various subjects from afar. A woman is compared to a cat, and then we see a little girl on a playground, kissing, hugging and swatting a little boy companion as if he were a doll-plaything. A supermarket is compared to a flea market; an upscale equestrian event is compared to a soccer match, a comic bullfight and other attractions. Marker edited and Lhomme was the cameraman.

A sophisticated and beautifully constructed account of landscape change in and around Paris in the early 1960s. The film raises complex issues about the meaning and experience of modern landscapes and the enigmatic characteristics of features such as canals, pylons and deserted factories. Rohmer also explores the role of landscape within different traditions of modern art and design and refers to specific architects, artists and engineers.

A young Frenchwoman fleeing her Italian fiancé in Caracas thrusts herself and those around her into madcap events.

A woman comes home from a long illness (read: a long absence). The city hasn't changed, the man she's returning to has. She will have to learn how to live all over again.

An American sculptor, passioned by literature, comes to Paris to perfect his art, but ends up with barely no money, and to survive has to sell The New York Herald Tribune, at night, to his compatriots. A look at the bohemian Parisian life of the fifties.

Le Navire Night is a story of love and desire sustained and nourished through sound waves. The film’s voice-over tells the story of a woman, terminally ill with leukemia, living in isolation at her wealthy father's villa, and a man working night shifts at a telephone company. They have never met in person.

Duras narrates a short story while the camera travels through the streets of Paris with short interludes of solemn music.

The children of Allonville produce an audio-visual document which features, among others, the monster Pétrifix and his Prime Minister Belphégor. A social and political metaphore.

A young man who lives on women meets his match in the young wife of a rich industrialist. Their affair is doomed by her taste for luxury and his dislike of her coolness.

A young woman in a deep depression leaves her husband and returns to her parents. She discovers her father is having an affair, becomes jealous of his mistress and tries to turn his feelings in her direction.

An adaptation of the Beckett play

Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from these letters, as the film shows a boat journey down the Seine, past familiar bridges and landmarks. – BFI

Jacques, a young man with artistic aspirations, spends four nights wandering Paris with a young woman, whom he rescued from suicide.

A young peasant named Pierre makes friends with John and his sister Sonia, young bourgeoisie, who invite him to their home. Pierre soon falls in love with Emily, John's mistress. After the death of the father of his hosts, he has the idea of ​​transforming their peaceful house into a brothel.

An American in Paris lives by sponging off his working friends, and throws a party using borrowed money when his rich American aunt dies, believing firmly in his horoscope.

In 1962, in the small town of Marvejols, young technicians from the RTF are trained to what can and should be direct cinema. “Liberate the camera, be able to throw it into the human space, into life.”

This taut psychological chiller tells the twisted story of Anna, a woman living in Paris, whose dreams of her Venetian counterpart, a secretive young woman who lives in a fine palace with her brother and an enigmatic older man, become frighteningly real. Anna's world begins coming apart after she is picked up by the police for witnessing an awful crime she cannot remember seeing. When she realizes that her dream alter-ego is trying to kill her, only her lover Marc's calming and supportive influence can save her from madness.

A humoristic view of the lives of Marie and Pierre Curie and their discoveries around radioactivity.

A young girl agrees to work in a center for girls who can't stay with their parents. She gets wrapped up in the plights of several of the girls, and tries to help them, but only gets herself into trouble with her parents and supervisor.

In this erstwhile comedy, Penelope (Isabelle Adjani) is already sufficiently unsettled by the fact that she is no longer a top model, and must cast around for another occupation. When her boyfriend leaves her, she becomes quite hysterical, conjuring up schemes for revenge, contemplating suicide, and so on. These dramatics eventually exasperate her best friend Sophie (Clementine Celarie) so much that she contemplates killing Penelope, her ex-boyfriend, or the two of them together, just to stop the whining.

Festival panafricain d'Alger is a documentary by William Klein of the music and dance festival held 40 years ago in the streets and in venues all across Algiers. Klein follows the preparations, the rehearsals, the concerts… He blends images of interviews made to writers and advocates of the freedom movements with stock images, thus allowing him to touch on such matters as colonialism, neocolonialism, colonial exploitation, the struggles and battles of the revolutionary movements for Independence.

This documentary chronicles an Yves Montand concert for Chilean refugees in France.

When a group of student actors travel to a workshop in Dordogne to put on a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It as a summer project, they are as lively and high-spirited a group as one could ask for. While they are there, the young man who has the leading role begins casting cow eyes at the director's wife (Valerie Stroh), and soon she and the boy are having an affair. By the end of the summer, the wife is sufficiently charmed to wonder how she could have gotten into this situation where she deeply loves both men.

A P.I. is obsessed with a cute woman, who seduces and kills rich men around W. Europe.

Julien seeks to reconquer Jeanne, his ex-wife, of whom he is separated and who lives with another man. He is prepared to go far to make it happen.

Based on the letters of a fictitious poetess to her lover. Duras reads extracts from the letters, about the poetess’s Jewish past, while the film shows stark waves beating against the seashore. – BFI

Jean Ravel's A Distant Gaze (D'un lointain regard) is a 12-minute observance of people on the streets backed by Michel Legrand music.

With her parents away, Anne-Marie drops her studies to spend eight days in Saint-Tropez with her friend Jean-Paul. They are soon caught up in the Saint-Tropez whirlwind. Jean-Paul is seduced by a wealthy woman while Anne-Marie ends up alone with a young man she meets along the way.

Two men are in love with the same woman. One of them, feeling rejected, attempts suicide. The young woman finally decides to choose a third man. When they recount their affair, none of them gives the same version of events...

A young man who seems lost, Nicolas, has an appointment with her sister Juliette. They are bound by a heavy childhood secret: their mother committed suicide when their father had instructed Nicolas to keep it. Since the father chased him and forbade Juliette to see him.

Godard's segment from the omnibus film "The Oldest Profession"