Bernard Blier

55 years ago, on October 1 1968, the first brand advertising spot appeared on the French television screen. Over the next three decades, thousands of creative little films would seduce and build our collective memory. Kitschy or cult spots, humor, slogans, music, stars, gimmicks, grand spectacle or sex appeal: during its golden age, how did advertising convince? Thierry Ardisson has brought together almost 400 advertising clips to relive the era of the conquest of minds and wallets.

In a career spanning more than half a century, Bernard Blier has shot more than 180 films. He alone represents a history of French cinema without having spent his time cultivating its legend. He crossed his century as an actor with the modesty of a craftsman. He believed in learning, know-how and transmission. He considered himself, like the butcher or the cabinetmaker, as a man useful to his fellow men. Bernard Blier found in Louis Jouvet, who was his teacher at the Conservatory, a master at playing, a mentor and even a spiritual father. Jouvet taught Blier the love of acting, theater and Molière. And if he knew how to take hold of Michel Audiard's best tirades like no one else, notably those of the "Tontons Flingueurs", it is to this apprenticeship that he owes it.

Follow in the footsteps of burlesque actor Pierre Richard, a key figure in French cinema in the 1970s and 1980s.

A documentary about writer Michel Audiard (1920-1985). Contemporary interviews are interwoven with archival footage and clips from his films. It offers a deeper understanding of the career of the man whom Jean Gabin swore by from the mid-1950s onward, and whom films such as "Les Tontons Flingueurs" immortalized.

Legendary "devil violinist" Niccolo Paganini sets all of 19th century Europe into frenzy.

Based on the famous novel of Milos Crnjanski, the story follows Serbian migrations from the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the XVIII century.

Elvio Battistini works as a ticket taker in the local cinema of the small town where he lives. He has a prosthesis in one leg, the result of an accident, but he tells anyone who will listen it is a war injury. Giuseppe Mondardini, is also an older man living alone in what was the splendid family home. When Elvio and Giuseppe meet, they hit it off immediately. A trip to a cooler area is in order, so Mordardini unveils his ancient automobile.

Adapation of the fanciful comic novel by Albert Cohen.

Russia, 1870. A group of young anarchist revolutionaries set out to overthrow the Czarist regime through violence. Their attacks create a climate of psychosis and mutual distrust among the population, but in reality, both revolutionaries and repressors are being manipulated by a diabolical individual.

A dying man Lord Gordon asks his niece Ada to find his son in Africa whom he left many years ago.