Arte Distribution

What if bodybuilding was not just a simple sporting and aesthetic discipline? What if it the practice was actually conforming to the social pressures of our neoliberal society, by celebrating and encouraging the constant surpassing of oneself?

With the help of illustrious weight trainers and experts, All Brawn offers a fascinating look into the history and culture of this art of performance. Gain insight into this mass phenomenon, a metaphor for the obsession with control and cost-efficiency.

There have been countless works of fiction based on true stories. It seems we can never have enough of them. Everyday folk are all the rage - and they often make excellent fictional characters. This documentary series takes up where fictional adaptations leave off and tells the real-life stories they are based on, using a wealth of archive material to retrace the extraordinary lives of the ordinary people involved.

Since the 1990s, our interest in true stories has skyrocketed. The shelves of bookshops are lined with them, and they fuel box-office hits. "Based on a true story" has become a favourite advertising hook, with its promise of strong emotions and dramatic events. Over and above its selling power, our fascination with real-life stories says much about the times we live in and our hunger for authenticity. In a world in which traditional moral criteria are becoming blurred, society is desperately searching for something real to hold onto. And people reason that if a story is true, it could easily have happened to them.

Loic Prigent opens the secret doors of Paris Fashion Week. Interviews of creative directors, journalists and influencers help us understand this obscure microcosm and give us the keys to fully apprehend this hidden industry.

Loic’s camera films discreetly and lets the viewer observe as a real attendee of these crazy fashion moments. Paris Fashion Week enables the audience to finally experience and understand the unique circus of fashion shows.
 
AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH: THE EXCEPTIONAL SHOW

These nine modules will immerse us in the very heart of Japanese society, in the very heart of Tokyo, its energy, its fantasy, its contradictions. The documentary series will decipher "Japan from inside out", in a fun, odd and offbeat way.

The gachappon is the equivalent of jukebox: a vending-machine for junk surprises, a spectacular mechanics like a pinball machine and addictive like a slot machine. But instead of delivering a plastic gift, a video capsule will emerge to help us discover this distant and fascinating country by its less known side: small daily realities!
Each of the nine episodes of the documentary web series Gacha Gacha is designed in a fun discovery mode, to dissect nine typically Japanese rites. Ways of doing things that are both millennial and hypermodern, disciplined bodies and lively minds, a very modest and suddenly exhibitionist daily life. Technological and spooky materials, sounds and colors.

Since the beginnings of journalism, nothing has beaten people talking about ideas and facts. To bring you current affairs with body and an extra dose of soul, ARTE REPORTS favours encounters with real people.

Every week, ARTE REPORTS reviews in images the events that made the headlines.

The serie THE GREAT GREEK MYTHS offers a new take on Homer's work: The Odyssey! This famous journey takes us to the seas alongside Ulysses, for a long journey, fraught with danger. 

After the Trojan massacre, Ulysses wants to return home, to the island of Ithaca. But the horrors of war have driven him away from the gods, in whom he no longer wants to believe. His mistrust earns him the ire of Zeus. During this long journey, he will encounter terrible storms, go through the underworld and face terrifying creatures – the Cyclops, the sirens, or Charybdis and Scylla. Meanwhile in his kingdom, his wife Penelope resists suitors who only think of stealing his place. Will Ulysses prove that he does not need the gods to live?
Keeping in line with the first season, each episode consists in a succession of original animations created in 3D and very rich iconography chosen from all artistic periods – from antiquity to the modern era.
 
ALREADY AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH VERSION:
ON ODYSSEUS’ TRAIL
ZEUS’ PUNISHMENT

40 minutes in total immersion in the fashion world with Mademoiselle Agnès. Ten days of fashion, stimulated by the new generation of designers, reassured by the old guard, and dazzled by hallucinating scenography.

As every season Mademoiselle Agnes immerses herself in the backstage of women's ready-to-wear to take the tension of the business, to measure the height of the heels as well as the morale of the troops.
 

In remote Morocco, in 1960, in the archeological site of Jebel Irhoud, a remarkable find was made: remains of Homo Sapiens. Today we can date them back to 300.000 years old.

A discovery that rewrites the story of Mankind’s origins, because up until now, the oldest remains found went back to 200.000 years ago! A revelation that not only stretches the timeline of Homo Sapiens’ story, but also changes the geography of where we came from, the whole sub-Sahara region.

Everywhere on the planet cities seem to pop up and grow, sometimes despite climatic or geographical conditions that seem impossible to live in. How do people acclimate to lead a normal life?

Follow Alexandra, a travel reporter, to meet those living in the most extreme cities of the world. The coldest, warmest, highest, most humid, etc. First stop in Yakutsk, Siberia and then La Paz in Bolivia,  to show the incredible adaptability of their inhabitants.
Some are extremely cold, others extremely hot, very high, very isolated or incredibly densely populated. The planet already has dozens of cities which, seen from our perspective, do not appear to be very appealing places to live. And yet, people like them and live in them, unaware that their daily life is a feat in itself. 
Journalist Alexandra Alevêque will experience life in some of the most extreme cities in the world, living in each one long enough to learn about the locals' way of life.
What she brings back is an insight into humankind's incredible capacity to adapt and find behavioural and organisational solutions.
What do these unusual cities look like?
What is life like for their inhabitants?
What can we learn from them?

Far from the frenzy of urban life, DESTINATIONS is an invitation to enjoy the simple pleasure of traveling to the four corners of the world to discover places that inspired the great artists, resulting in an exchange between a land, a town, a landscape and a work of art.

The Provence of Cézanne, the Brazil of Stefan Zweig, the Kenya of Karen Blixen, the Catalonia of Salvador Dali, or the Japan of Katsushika Hokusai. The series will also take in places fashioned by mankind which have become legendary in their own right, such as Jerusalem, Harar in Ethiopia, the hanging gardens of Singapore, and the iconic Route 66.
DESTINATIONS tells how these places have evolved through history, and which cultures shaped their character, their monuments, their music and their gastronomy. In 13 minutes, these films combine learning with the pleasure of delightful images and unusual encounters with local figures and artistic sensibilities. This is an invitation on a slow voyage, to satisfy an urge for adventure, with some enlightening stopovers to fire the curiosity, inspiring one to pack one’s bags and immerse oneself in the experience.
 
AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH: 
OUT OF KENYA BY KAREN BLIXEN
PROVENCE, CEZANNE'S MUSE
DANCE, TAHITI'S SENSUAL REVOLT
THE BEIJING OF THE LAST EMPEROR
MARIA-GALANTE, A TALE OF RUM AND TEARS
BRAZIL, LAND OF HOPE FOR STEFAN ZWEIG
LOS ANGELES, HOME OF ART DECO
HUMBERSTONE, AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF CHILE
CHILOE, IDYLLIC CHILEAN ISLAND
BO-KAAP, COLORS OF SOUTH AFRICA
BORNEO, THE HISTORY OF SARAWAK PEPPER
SINGAPORE AND ITS EXTRAORDINARY GARDENS
ISLAND OF MOZANBIQUE, A PORTUGUESE GEM IN AFRICA
PERITO MORENO ARGENTINA
THE MOZAMBIQUE OF MIA COUTO
IRELAND OF LIGHTHOUSES AND STORMS
GRANVILLE, THE CHILDHOOD OF CHRISTIAN DIOR
RONDA, CRADLE OF THE SPANISH
CARTAGENA, JEWEL OF COLONIAL COLOMBIA
CUBA, TOBACCO VALLEY AND THE TASTE OF CIGARS
CATALUNYA, THE BRILLIANT MUSE OF SALVADOR DALI
ROUTE 66, TACKLING THE CALIFORNIAN MYTH
THE AMAZING SCOTLAND OF HARRY POTTER
IRELAND, THE FOLLIES’ CRAZY STORY
THE HAPPY NORWAY OF EDVARD MUNCH

The working class has played an essential part of European countries’ history – through revolutions, wars and social progress.  In 4 episodes of a spectacular tale, this show reminds us of what our societies owe to the workers’ movements and its struggles.

The story begins in the 18th century. But their fight carries on today. Much of our current democracies’ institutions and values flow from older working class demands: universal suffrage or social solidarity are some of its most telling examples. Our culture – the way we dress, the songs we listen to, the movies we watch and the mass-media themselves – heavily relies on the workers’ erstwhile popular culture. Finally, all across Asia, Africa and Latin America, millions of women and men experience lives similar to the 18th and 19th centuries’ European working class. We will bring out the present’s ever looming shadow by constantly flowing back and forth between history and current situations. Those contemporary testimonies and photographs will help us gather the threads of memory between yesterday and nowadays together again.

Whether they depict deep-sea divers in the Bermuda triangle or game keepers in the far reaches of the Siberian forest, these films provide us with insights into the lives and work of exceptional men and women. 

From sapphire mines in Madagascar, to a small Russian village on the edge of the Arctic Circle that is slowly sinking into the sand, to the Japanese island of Miyako and its inhabitants who nearly all live beyond their hundredth birthday or women peasants in the Peruvian Andes who have created their own football club…
Our teams travel the planet exploring nature, technology and remote civilizations and portray what they discover there through meticulously documented, emotion-packed reports.
This multiple award-winning series is one of the most ambitious productions of its kind.