Quatre D

Images of the Bois de Boulogne mixed with paintings on silk filmed by transparency.

In the city of Geneva, an Egyptian director involves a Belgian actress in a game. Julie begins by reading the first lines of "Sexus". Then, the filmmaker starts drawing the "inside of her head". What happens between the lines?

Considered by Jacques Rivette as “practice films”, these early images offer us a view of the beginning of his artistic journey. AUX QUATRE COINS includes an original device that immediately sets itself apart from any other classic narrative form. These first experiments were silent films with intertitles. AUX QUATRE COINS does not have any intertitles but black images between a few shots. Rivette offers the viewer intriguing visual forms, encouraging him to imagine his own story. (Hervé Pichard)

The image of an ageless black woman, who is called Oummi Fatma or Myriam or Selma, is engraved forever on the memory of every inhabitant of Zarzis, our small native town located in the south-east of Tunisia. This fantastic matchmaker of all work is indispensable because she is fully in charge of the complex ritual of the wedding ceremony and facilitates the bride and groom's difficult transition to married life. Oummi Fatma is one of the last women of her generation who still goes through this ritual whose secrets she alone knows and which a brutal modernization threatens to end forever.

Ten year-old Anthony has red hair, as did Antonio Vivaldi. For his birthday, his grandfather gives him a book. He would have preferred a video game, but what can you expect from a grandfather who spends his time building violins in his workshop? But this is a magic book! When you draw in it, it plays the Four Seasons: it’s an activity book, a herbarium, a sketchbook... The orchestra playing the music is inside the book, on the other side of each page... drawings come to life and join the orchestra in an imaginary space. The book accompanies Anthony throughout the seasons until his eleventh birthday.

In Les quatre récits d’Alice, Myriam Jacob-Allard explore a story which, because of its persistence, is part of the family lore. This story, told countless times by her grandmother, is an implausible tale of the time a hurricane worthy of The Wizard of Oz, when she was a child, picked her up and sent her flying.

Composed entirely of still photographs shot by Marker himself over the course of his restless travel through twenty-six countries, If I Had Four Dromedaries stages a probing, at times agitated, search for the meanings of the photographic image, in the form of an extended voiceover conversation and debate between the "amateur photographer" credited with the images and two of his colleagues. Anticipating later writings by Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag (who professed her admiration for the film) If I Had Four Dromedaries reveals Marker's instinctual understanding of the secret rapport between still and moving image.

A derelict fishing boat in the Caribbean Sea is taken in by four ship's crew hoping to make a profit from the cargo. Little do they know, however, that the nets contain more than just fish.

The opening scene is in a tailor's shop, showing the four assistants more or less in love with their employer's daughter. After some time, the tailor says he will give his daughter to the one who shows himself to be the cleverest. Some very amusing incidents follow. The various feats accomplished during the contest are clever examples of trick photography. (Moving Picture World)

Emily and Elizabeth are two peculiar sisters. They’re recluted from the world and became piano virtuosos.

An advertisement for Sigrand brand Menswear.

Monsieur Durand-Bidon's mother-in-law is decidedly cantankerous. She never ceases - she who is a duchess - to reproach the latter for his low origins. One morning, at dawn, while he comes home "well watered", he is surprised with a comrade at the bottom of a bathtub. Taken for a homosexual, overwhelmed by Step-Mom, he will never stop trying to escape her and will end up, after many adventures, by learning a somewhat embarrassing secret about the pseudo-nobility of his step-family.

The unconventional story of virtuoso violinist Angèle Dubeau and her incredible journey from a small Quebec rural town to Julliard and eventually, to the world stage.