Ciné-Archives

---

Ciné-Archives

Cine-Archives is an association under the 1901 French law created in 1998 whose mission is to preserve and to valorize the audiovisual film heritage of the French Communist Party and the labour movement.

The archival fonds

In the early 1930s, several structures of the labour movement (French communist party, CGT, Secours Populaire, L'Humanité, but also municipalities of the outskirts of Paris run by communists) began to produce and distribute films aimed to raise awareness among public opinion.

This activist film production blossomed during the Popular Front when the increasing number of members brought in cash flows to fund the activity, as well as a pool of professional filmmakers willing to work voluntarily for their party or their trade union (for instance Henri Alekan, Jean-Paul Le Chanois, Jacques Becker and many other film technicians). Thus, several structures such as Ciné-Liberté and Les Films Populaires worked from 1936 to 1939 at the production and the diffusion of these films in film clubs and activist networks, in particular at the Bellevilloise (a worker cooperative created at the end of the 19^th century in the proletarian neighborhood of Belleville. Originally aimed at wholeselling wholefood for workers, this place soon became a prominent cultural center for the working class.) The most representative film from this first era is La Vie est à nous, collective artwork under the supervision of Jean Renoir designed to support the electoral campaign of the French Communist Party at the legislative elections in 1936.

After the Second World War, new organizations emerged such as the Coopérative de Production et de Distribution de Film (CPDF) and Procinex. A new generation of filmmakers and film editors took over the production. Beginners such as Robert Menegoz, René Vautier, Raymond Vogel began their career working alongside with confirmed artists like Louis Daquin, who was at the time the official filmmaker of the PCF.

After a drop in the activities in the 1960s, the communist film production breathed of fresh air after 1968 with the birth of Dynadia, soon followed in 1971 by the creation of Uni/Ci/té, a company that was to produce and distribute films for the French communist party all through the 1970s and early 1980s.

Among the stakeholders of this new age of communist filmmaking were Marcel Trillat, Paul Seban, Jean-Patrick Lebel, Bruno Muel, Jean-André Fieschi, Bernard Eisenschitz, Miroslav Sebestik, Jacques Bidou....

From 1980, the nature of the films produced by the Party changed : films produced from then on were no longer intended to be screened in theatres, and made way to short clips shot on video, designed to be aired on TV in specific programs dedicated to politics. Nowadays, the audiovisual sector of the French communist party is still producing videos meant to be screened online.

The archival fonds is often enriched by personal collections of amateur films. Ciné-Archives is part of the Inedits network which gathers European Cinematheques preserving amateur films.

The association

An archival sector was set up within Uni/Ci/té by Claude Thiébaut back in the 1970s. He began to establish a proper inventory of all the films produced by the labour movement since the 1930s and that were at that time scattered through various warehouses and laboratories. In the 1980s, Claude Thiébaut created his own society, Zoobabel, to keep rediscovering the filmography.

Since 1998, the association Ciné-Archives has taken over the activity and has made the collection available to a large audience, researchers and documentary makers. Partnerships were launched with the National Center of Cinematography (film heritage department) to preserve and restaure the nitrate films and with the Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis to preserve analog, magnetic and digital formats. Films are available on the association website as well as at parner facilities like the National Library of France, the Forum des Images and the Archives Départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis.

Since 2015, Ciné-Archives has published three DVD boxsets devoted to this collection of films. One has been awarded a prize by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

Filmography

• 1936 : La Vie est à nous (collective, supervised by Jean Renoir)
• 1936 : Grèves d'occupations (collective)
• 1937 : Le Temps des cerises (Jean-Paul Le Chanois)
• 1938 : La Grande Espérance (Jacques Becker)
• 1938 : Les Bâtisseurs (Jean Esptein)
• 1938 : Sur les routes d'acier (Boris Peskine)
• 1938 : Les Métallos (Jacques Lemare)
• 1946 : Les Lendemains qui chantent (Louis Daquin)
• 1948 : La Grande Lutte des mineurs (collective, attributed to Louis Daquin)
• 1949 : L'Homme que nous aimons le plus (collective, attributed to Victoria Mercanton)
• 1954 : La Terre fleurira (Henri Aisner)
• 1963 : La Grande Grève des mineurs (Louis Daquin)
• 1967 : Ce jour là, 26 novembre 1967 (Marcel Trillat, Jacques Krier)
• 1975 : Guerre du peuple en Angola (Bruno Muel, Marcel Trillat)

Selective bibliography

• Céline Barthonnat, L’expérience Unicité ou l’émergence de la communication audiovisuelle du Parti communiste français (1968-1976), in Françoise Blum, Des radios de lutte à Internet. Militantismes médiatiques et numériques, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2012.[1]
• Jean-Pierre Bertin-Maghit, Une histoire mondiale des cinémas de propagande, Nouveau Monde Editions, 2008
• Julie Cazenave, Une archive, des films et le Front populaire, in Les Cahiers d'histoire, Revue d'histoire critique, n°103, 2008. Quelques notes après une année commémorative bien remplie
• Bernard Eisenschitz, La Vie est à nous, film d'actualité, in La Vie est à nous, Le Temps des cerises et autres films du Front populaire, Ed. Ciné-Archives, 2016
• Pauline Gallinari, Les communistes et le cinéma : France, de la Libération aux années 60, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015
• Jacques Girault, La Terre fleurira. Le Parti communiste et le cinéma au début des années 1950, Presses universitaires de la Sorbonne, 2002
• Sébastien Layerle, Caméras en lutte en mai 68, Nouveau Monde Editions, 1999
• Pascal Ory, La Belle Illusion : culture et politique sous le signe du Front populaire, 1935-1938, CNRS Editions, 2016
• Laurent Marie, Le Cinéma est à nous, le PCF et le cinéma français de la Libération à nos jours, L'Harmattan, 2006
• Tangui Perron, L'Ecran rouge, syndicalisme et cinéma de Gabin à Belmondo, Editions de l'Atelier, 2018
• Tangui Perron, Cinéma du front populaire et guerre d'Espagne, Association Histoire et mémoire ouvrière en Seine-Saint-Denis, 1999
• Tangui Perron, Les Films fédéraux ou la trilogie cégétiste du Front populaire, Comité pour l'Histoire économique et financière de la France, 2002
• Sobanet Andrew, L’Homme que nous aimons le plus: French Intellectuals Celebrate Stalin’s 70^th Birthday, French Forum, University of Pennsylvania Press, Volume 40, Numbers 2-3, Spring/Fall 2015, pp. 47-66
• Danielle Tartakowsky, "Le cinéma militant des années trente, source pour l’histoire du Front populaire", in Les Cahiers de la Cinémathèque / Cinéma ouvrier en France, Perpignan, 2000

External links

• Ciné-Archives website
• Website of Inédits Films Amateurs / Mémoire d'Europe , devoted to amateur film

New submission request after adding sources and references

This article "Ciné-Archives" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Ciné-Archives. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---