ARTE Distribution

This film offers you the opportunity to learn about the composer's life through his letters, his handwritten notes and the testimonies of great musicians and artists of our time. 

Through writing and music, this film offers an intimate approach to Beethoven's life and work: discover the struggles of a man who never gave up.
Beethoven's correspondence and diaries make for a unique material. It sheds a light on the composer to reveal a side of him that has never been seen before. His temperament, his struggles, what he admired, what he hated, how he lived his life... Most of these precious writings are rarely talked about.

The reopening of the cold case of Jim Morrison’s death... Was it a heart attack? A CIA plot? An overdose? With exclusive interviews, we discover the truth about the artist’s mysterious death.

Fifty years ago, in Paris, during the night of July 2 to 3, 1971, the body of rock star Jim Morrison was found lifeless in the bathtub of an apartment by his American girlfriend Pamela Courson. The circumstances of his death were mysterious, but it was not made public until a few days later. Heart attack? CIA plot? Overdose? The police having, strangely, not ordered any autopsy, the questions do not end up feeding the myth. Only one thing is certain, that night, Jim Morrison joined 27 Club , these libertarian idols, such as Janis Joplin, Brian Jones or Jimi Hendrix, destroyed by their excesses at the age of twenty-seven years old.

Walk down memory lane with pop icon Damon Albarn, whose career spanned 30 years of British history as the singer of mythic groups Gorillaz and Blur.

He has gone from being Blur’s charismatic frontman to the brains behind Gorillaz, the producer of African artists, and the composer of post-modern opera. With sales of around 35 million records, and 24 albums with six different line-ups, the global success of this man ahead of his time is undeniable. In the UK, he is perhaps more than just a star; he’s a public persona. And his vertiginous career tells an intimate and intense story of his relationship with his home country over the past 25 years. From popstar to anonymous cartoon character, he shifts effortlessly between musical genres, but his style always seems to stay true to his British roots.

A collection of 32 live concerts filmed in optimal conditions, often in 4K, in extraordinary places. Among the artists : Angus and Julia Stone, Lucas Debargue, Christian Scott, Monty Alexander, Avishai Cohen Quartet, Linda Lee Hopkins, Jacky Terrasson... Kintsugi and many more. 

Enjoy extraordinary concerts, as if you were there. The greatest artists of the moment, whether pop, classical, jazz or afro-beat, are on MUSIC LIVE COLLECTION.

Calypso Rose is an ambassador of Caribbean music, a living legend, a charismatic character, the uncontested diva of Calypso Music, often compared to great black singers such as Aretha Franklyn, Myriam Makeba and Cesaria Evora.

From Paris, New York, Trinidad ,Tobago to Africa at Ouida Africa - in each place, we learn a little more about the many faces and facets of her existence.

This road movie is not only about memory, the exchange and discovery of world cultures but also the journey of a militant and authentic woman, an Afro-Caribbean soul, an exemplary artist, far from the glitz and glitter.

Moving along the thread that links her universe with the world, we experience the dreams and disappointments of this amazing female artist. But more specifically, it is by carrying us with her on this intimate journey that Calypso Rose transmits to us the pulse of her life.

2012 : Prize "Attention of the jury" at the 10th International Festival of Film of Ouidah (Benin)
2013 : Winner of the FESPACO Documentary Film Award (Burkina Faso)

An investigation into an old papyrus discovered in a storeroom of the Louvre museum has revealed that it was a very ancient Greek score. But how can we know who composed it? How do we interpret this music? And where do we find the ancient instruments to play it?

The text's grammatical features give us a clue to the composer's identity: Carcinus, an author cited by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. His name is engraved on a wall in the Parthenon. As we learn more and more about Carcinus’ life, a whole world opens up to us: the history of Greek musicians who were revered like gods and traveled the Mediterranean to take part in competitions modeled on the Olympic Games.
But to hear the Medea as it was heard by the Greeks 2400 years ago, it still has to be played on period instruments. From the Greek cities of Anatolia to the Ptolemies’ Egypt, from the mythical site of Delphi to the discoveries made in Pompeii, relive this voyage along the Mediterranean coast, where archaeological excavations have unearthed a few ancient scores and many instruments’ remains. Unfortunately the passing of time has made them brittle. It is now impossible to make them produce any sound or vibrate.
But thanks to new technologies developed at IRCAM and the Cité de la Musique, it is now possible to virtually reconstruct and hear sounds that have been lost for two millennia. For the time of a concert in the prestigious ancient theater of Arles, the audience too can delve into a world of sound that was thought to have disappeared forever: the music of ancient Greece.

Radiohead’s music has been crossing borders and transcending genres for 25 years. This documentary reveals how the band succeeded in reinventing themselves to always be in step with the times, and how they managed to preserve their originality and independence. 

From their early pop-grunge days with Drill and Pablo Honey to the electro of KID A and orchestral arrangements of A Moon Shaped Pool, the five-piece English group has evolved, constantly shifting their references. Despite being one of the world’s top-selling bands, having sold some 30 million albums, they have pulled off the delicate exercise of being hugely popular while retaining their independence, having deftly navigated the shift to digital and the crisis in the recorded music industry.
 
Emblematic of the 1990s but still relevant today, Radiohead’s output spans a quarter-century that has seen neoliberalism spread in the west, the Internet become widespread, and digital devices become an extension of the self, through to the promise of impending transhumanism. These existential and political themes have been clear strands throughout the group’s oeuvre, each album providing an echo to a moment in our history.
Radiohead: Mutant Group will explore how these themes come through in the lyrics, music, videos, graphics, and declarations of the members of Radiohead, and how the band has kept its singularity and commercial and artistic freedom without being swallowed up by the “monster".

1988. In only few months, South African musician Johnny Clegg, an almost unknown artist, has sold millions of albums. With his hit Asimbonanga, which paid tribute to Nelson Mandela, he was instantly propelled to the rank of worldwide star and became the symbol of the struggle against apartheid.

"Johnny Clegg, the white Zulu", Amine Mestari's documentary, relates his adventure.
The exceptional adventure of a committed musician, crazy for dance, who has made the world loves his vision of a South African culture that allows everyone, black and white, to express themselves and make it possible to get along.
Apartheid wanted to separate blacks from whites, Johnny Clegg brought them together by mixing English and Zulu, African rhythms and rock. In the early 1970s, he invented a unique style, that is unlike any other, and made it a political art.
His story and that of his music are in line with the history of South Africa and his long journey to freedom.

2009 : the best-selling music artist of all times brutally disappeared, leaving the world grieving. Today, his father, brothers, friends, managers, employees, dancers and choreographers remember their Michael. 

His talent, unique personality, his obsession with perfection and the events that led to his sudden death. Including Joe Jackson's last interviews.

On 6th September 2007, passed the man who was probably the greatest and was incontestably the most popular of opera singers in history – the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti. 

Although he is unanimously credited with having democratised opera, making it accessible to the greatest number, focus is rarely put on the strategy he devised and implemented in order to carry out his actions, nor what his actions reveal of the man and artist, and of the resulting metamorphosis from opera singer to pop artist.
Through this angle, this film sets out to pay tribute to the man who summed up his credo, obsession and life’s work, in the following way: “They led the public to believe that classical music belonged to a restricted elite. I was the way to prove to the world that was wrong. 

Techno has become a culture in its own right, ranking among trendy music, and bringing together millions of people worldwide.

Its DJs have become veritable stars. It is a global, worldwide culture, and its creators and fans alike share its common denominators of hedonism, a thirst for freedom, and a sense of suspended time via its musical trances.
 
Thanks to Internet, but also thanks to emblematic festivals, the Techno movement is today undergoing exponential growth. What are the codes and the creative processes of this worldwide culture? Who are the leading players of this global movement? How does this music influence contemporary creation, and increasingly, the economy?

"Mr. Brown" is the portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest artists, Black American singer, James Brown, who made it to the summit of his art despite having being born black and poor in 1930s America.

Through musical archive footage and various encounters, "Mr Brown" recalls the whole of James Brown's life from 1933 to 2006, concentrating in particular on his years of combat and glory between 1955 and 1971.

"Mr. Brown" also recounts the world in which the artist evolved, referring to his visit to American troops in 1968 when they were at war in Vietnam. More general, sociological archive footage tells the story of the Black American community in a very turbulent period, from the beginning of the 1950s to the end of the 1960s.