In 1602, King Henri IV decided to develop French manufacturing to limit imports of products such as carpets and tapestries, of which the royal court was a major consumer. In 1662, Colbert (Minister of Louis XIV) bought the buildings and decided to create there the "Royal Manufacture of Crown furniture and tapestries", where upholsterers settled, but also painters, goldsmiths, engravers, cabinetmakers... Reserved to the furnishing of Royal Houses and diplomatic presents. To make this documentary, Alain Pol uses a new process developed by the French Lucien and Armand Roux. They had developed a color cinema technique with the "Rouxcolor" process, a patent filed in 1932. A simple process, which preceded the arrival of the American technicolor, less precise, but requiring special equipment for cinemas, which cut his career short.
The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north.
From the imposing mating call of the red deer and the flight of the buzzard to the hunt of the fox and the micro-ecosystem on a massive oak: nature documentarist Luc Enting recorded it all for his stunning feature film Wild Heart of Holland, produced by PVPictures.
Maverick underground American/Lebanese musician and ethnomusicologist Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls and Sublime Frequencies), lands as a stranger in Cairo, soon after the 2011 uprisings, and teams up with three young Egyptian musicians for the translation of his old songs into Arabic.
The first Muslim woman to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired millions around the globe through her work as a human rights lawyer defending women and children against a brutal regime in Iran.
Shot in a creaky, wooden-floored Parisian recording studio at an inaugural three-day “forum of ideas” focusing on the manifold possibilities of “Resistance”, the film initially appears to be a structuralist document of a philosophical discussion in-the-round.
A confrontation and comparison of two church buildings, which could hardly be more different, but also a dialogue between various concepts of church and community: the Protestant Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen and the Catholic Cathedral in Orvieto.
On December 1st 1990, watched by the world’s media, construction worker Graham Fagg of Dover climbed through a hole in a chalk wall 40 metres below the seabed of the English Channel, shook the hand of Philippe Cozette of Calais and shouted, Vive la France! On June 23rd 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union.
The only film by Yugoslavian-Brazilian journalist Vladimir Herzog, this cinéma verité short subject is the result of a film course taught by Swedish documentary filmmaker Arne Sucksdorf in Brazil, in 1962.
Freda the cleaner takes the lid off the Town Hall in this animated film about the services provided by local authorities, and illustrates what life would be like without them.
Popular movie trailers from 1951
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1951:
Little Henery the Chicken Hawk wants to trap Foghorn Leghorn for his dinner, and Barnyard Dawg says he will help Henery to catch Foghorn on one condition - that Henery find him a bone.
Five-year-old Patsy has competition for her father's attention from the family's new baby. Her attempts to win her father's praise receive instead a rebuke.
In the 1880s, an unruly group of Cossacks stays in Sankola's house in Hämälä. Soon the group's leader Kuisma sets his sights on the house's adopted daughter Helina .
After conning a potential buyer into believing that Queenie's herd is diseased, nasty would-be empire builder Duke Drake is confronted by the girl's new tough foreman Bill Foster.
Stock-footage from Republic Pictures' earlier Zorro serials was served up once again in this 12 chapter cliffhanger, this time without the financially strapped studio having to credit Zorro creator Johnston McCulley or pay any royalties.
Comments
Have you watched Les Tapisseries Des Gobelins yet? What did you think about it?