Henry Chapier

We thought we'd seen, read, and heard everything there was to see about the Cannes Film Festival, from the glitz and gossip to the scandals and censorship. And yet, Emmanuel Barnault's "Morceaux de Cannes" (Pieces of Cannes), by this leading expert on Italian and French cinema, convinces us otherwise. The third largest event in the world (after the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup) reveals its secrets only sparingly, as this film attests. The result of passionate research in the INA archives, these 52 minutes, without interviews or voice-over narration, string together rare and sometimes previously unseen footage. Taken together, they tell a surprising, original, and heartwarming story of the Festival. On the beach, on a street corner, in a restaurant, or in the privacy of a hotel room, these forgotten archives summon the greatest filmmakers, actors, and actresses of the last seventy years, from Jean Cocteau to David Lynch, for an anthology of the Festival's history.

This satire concerns three French singing idols and their attempt to stay in the public eye. A press conference, backstage hedonism, psychedelia, manipulative managers and disc jockeys are portrayed as the pop culture is thoroughly and effectively lampooned in this independent feature.

Annie is a middle-age wife, still sexy and pampered by her husband, Phillippe, who is the owner and general manager of a dynamic company. Under the deluge of sexy Swedish movies, sexy advertising on the streets, sexy intimate clothing in ladies' shops, and even talks about sex and marital infidelity with her mother and female friends, Annie starts feeling left aside by her husband, and trying to attract in a number of ways - and failing. It's not the all-purpose secretary at the office that is keeping him late, it's a tax expert that, asking the most innocent questions, is finding out how Philippe can manage a company without profits, and still manage a home, may be two... with high quality levels.

Poupée and her (so-called) brother Paulo share an apartment in Paris. They dream of becoming actors. In the meantime, life goes on, nothing happens, until Poupée meets François.

Jean-Louis and Anne have had their fling and separated. Now 20 years have passed. He is still dating various women. She is now a big-time director whose most recent film was a very expensive bomb. She comes up with the idea of making a romance based upon her fling with Jean-Louis. She contacts him to gain his permission. Jean-Louis is still in racing and goes away for a desert rally while she begins filming. She finds the mood of their romance difficult to recapture in her film.

Excerpts and fragments from different interviews with Orson Welles making a statement to journalists in fluent French about his career and his conception of life.

Two Polish brothers arrive in Paris with dreams of becoming rich and famous, and sure enough, they are soon participating in some forgotten film festival as a producer and a director -- but will this get them anywhere?

Documentary about the filmmaker Fernando Arrabal.

A failed actress sinks into neurosis and mythomania. To give relief to her dismal existence, she engages in all kinds of activities ranging from false testimony to occasional prostitution.

An interview with journalist Henry Chapier.

A young Frenchman arrives in Northern California looking to forget a lost love and ends up encountering various forms of feminine power.

A young Frenchman arrives in Northern California looking to forget a lost love and ends up encountering various forms of feminine power.

A young architect, Alquié, is sent by the French government to study a solution to save Venice. His collaborator, an Italian photographer, believes that the Frenchman does not know enough about the soul of the city and its inhabitants to decide on his fate; in order to make him better grasp this ambiguity, he uses the charms of Marina, a young idle countess whom he seduced easily. This one, enigmatic like the city, frequents the two men until the day when her mother decides to marry her to a very wealthy compatriot, more interesting for the nobility of his ancestors than for his personal value. Understanding that the Venetians prefer to ossify and preserve their outdated traditions, Alquié leaves, disgusted, Marina and Venice.

This documentary portrays the solidarity of young Californian left-wing militants with the Black Panther cause. Footage of their militant activities, during discussions and protests in Oakland, where they were following the trial of Black Panther leader Huey Newton, throws light on the reasons for their active support for the Afro-American revolutionary movement known as the Black Panther Party. The young American film-maker who, as part of his film project about Californian hippies, conducts a series of interviews exemplifies the type of commitment they chose. The documentary also features clips from speeches given by Black Panther party militants, an interview with Black Panther Party information secretary Kathleen Cleaver, concerts and a Black Panther military parade.