CSI Library: French language, literature and culture: Videos, films, media streaming

Videos from our collection

La bête humaine by film by Jean Renoir ; producers, Raymond Hakim, Robert Hakim ; directed by Jean Renoir.
Call Number: 2035 PQ
ISBN: 0780026241
Publication Date: 2006, 1938
Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux, Blanchette Brunoy, Gérard Landry.
La belle et la bête by produced by André Paulvé ; directed and written by Jean Cocteau
Call Number: 2370 PN
ISBN: 0780026098
Publication Date: c2003
The wild child by a film by François Truffaut ; produced by Les Films du carrosse, Les Productions Artistes associés.
Call Number: 1583 PN
ISBN: 0792850386
Publication Date: 2001
La règle du jeu by fantaisie dramatique de Jean Renoir ; scénario et dialogues, Jean Renoir ; collaborateur, Koch ; directeur de production, Claude Renoir.
Call Number: 2038 PN
ISBN: 1604655208
Publication Date: 2011
Boudu sauvé des eaux by Janus Films ; les Établissements Jacques Haik présentent ; réalisé par les Productions Michel Simon avec le concours du CCF ; réalisation de Jean Renoir
Call Number: 2043 PN
ISBN: 0780030125
Publication Date: c2005
Stage & spectacle by three films by Jean Renoir
Call Number: 2040 PN
ISBN: 9780780028845
Publication Date: 2004
Le passion de Jeanne d'Arc by Gaumont ; produced by Issa Clubb ; directed by Carl-Theodore Dreyer ; written by Carl-Theodore Dreyer, Joseph Delten.
Call Number: 1128 PN
ISBN: 0780022343
Publication Date: c1999

Movie database

Film Platform
This collection of streaming videos connects academic audiences with leading documentary films from across the world. It includes a wide variety of meaningful documentaries of social, political and cultural importance, in many subjects. Film highlights include RBG, Dolores, and films in many languages. All films are accessible immediately, without special request. These films now are on a new Alexander Street platform!
Kanopy - Live Streaming Video
The collection consists of streaming films, which can be watched on or off campus, that cover a full range of disciplines including documentaries, tutorials, and TV shows on academic topics. A number of classic and popular films from the Criterion Collection are also included. If you are a faculty member and you cannot find the film you need for your course, please fill out our Request Form. The library will need notice so that we can purchase the film licence from Kanopy or order a DVD, depending on your classroom needs.

Documentary films - streaming

La France
Publication Date: 2007
An intoxicating blend of wartime romance and brightly colored musical, the film depicts an original world "where Bresson meets the Beatles"
Made in France
Publication Date: 2015
Fascinated and horrified by the rise of 'home grown' radicals in Paris, ambitious journalist Sam goes undercover in an extremist jihadist cell in Paris, determined to uncover the roots of the phenomenon.
Paris Was A Woman
Publication Date: 1996
Paris Was A Woman re-creates the mood and flavor of this female artistic community in Paris during its most magical era. A film portrait of the creative community of women writers, artists, photographers and editors (including Colette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas) who flocked to the Left Bank of Paris in the early decades of the 20th century.
Cezanne, Portraits of A Life
Publication Date: 2018
Described by Picasso and Matisse as "the father of us all" Paul Cezanne is considered one of the greatest artists of all time. Featuring interviews with art experts and conversations with his great-grandson Philippe Cezanne, viewers travel to the artist's home and studio in Provence.
Too Black To Be French
Publication Date: 2015
In this documentary film, Isabelle Boni-Claverie explores the role of race and the persistence of racism in France, as well as the impact of the French colonial past.
A Year In Champagne
Publication Date: 2014
At first glance, the region is not an obvious source of romance. Champagne's history is grim and bloody, swept by war and destruction from Attila the Hun to the filthy trenches of WWI and the Nazi depredations of WWII. With renowned wine importer Martine Saunier as our guide, we get a rare glimpse behind the scenes into the real Champagne through six houses,
A Year In Burgundy
Publication Date: 2013
This film follows seven wine-making families in the Burgundy region of France through the course of a full year, and delves into the cultural and creative process of making wine, as well as its deep ties to the land.
Faces of Terror
Publication Date: 2015
What leads children of European immigrants to reject the values of the nation which they grew up in and be reborn as extremists of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State? Their stories shed insight to the journeys of those involved in the 2015 Paris attacks.
Raid, French Police Special Unit
Publication Date: 2015
It was the Raid unit charged with neutralising and arresting those behind the deadly attacks in Paris in November 2015 and on Charlie Hebdo. We follow these elite men at work and through their difficult training period and see what makes them so special.
To Be and To Have: The Successes of a Small School In Rural France
Publication Date: 2002
To Be and To Have offers an in-depth look at a small school in rural France where one remarkable man has been doing the job of a small teaching staff for 20 years, and has taught several generations of bright and capable children along the way.

Al-Mahdi Scouts
The Al-Mahdi scouts are Shiite Muslims. An Islamic community, originally from southern Lebanon, who follows the prophet Mohamed and his descendants and whose lives are affected by the Israeli-Arab conflict. The Al-Mahdi scouts were created in the wake of Hezbollah. The film’s examination of three young scouts raises many questions for us. Are they just like other scouts ? What do they tell us of their vision of Lebanon and its reality?
In Bed with the Arab Spring
Women played a major role in the revolutions that swept across the Middle East, some even becoming icons of the new opportunities that surfaced when the older, oppresive regimes were overthrown. However, the days of the Arab Spring also marked a shocking and unchecked surge in sexual harassment cases suffered by women in Egypt. The region's fight for freedom created further opportunities for repression and sexual violence; crimes that continue to go unpunished. Against this background, Islamic woman have come to represent the front line in a clash between secularism and traditionalism.
Introduction to French literature
Using selections from French prose and poetry, this program develops an overview of French history from the coronation of Charlemagne to the present. Included are dramatized reading from contemporary sources, commentary by modern scholars, on-location photography and fine are from major French libraries and museums.
The Battle of Algiers
One of the most influential political films in history, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, by Gillo Pontecorvo, vividly re-creates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the occupying French in the 1950s. As violence escalates on both sides, children shoot soldiers at point-blank range, women plant bombs in cafes, and French soldiers resort to torture to break the will of the insurgents. Shot on the streets of Algiers in documentary style, the film is a case study in modern warfare, with its terrorist attacks and the brutal techniques used to combat them. Pontecorvo's tour de force has astonishing relevance today.
Diabolique
Before Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Repulsion, there was DIABOLIQUE. This thriller from Henri-Georges Clouzot, which shocked audiences in Europe and the U.S., is the story of two women--the fragile wife and the willful mistress of the sadistic headmaster of a boys' boarding school--who hatch a daring revenge plot. With its unprecedented narrative twists and terrifying images, DIABOLIQUE is a heart-grabbing benchmark in horror filmmaking, featuring outstanding performances by Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse.
A Pure Formality
Onoff (Gerard Depardieu) is a famed author who has become a recluse in recent years, publishing nothing. One night, he is picked up by police officers, who find him running across the French countryside in the rain, breathless and apparently suffering from short-term memory loss. A murder has been committed in the nearby woods, and suspecting Onoff's involvement, the authorities detain him at a leaky, dark command post to await the arrival of an inspector, ironically a fan of Onoff's work... Nominated for the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Winner of the Best Cinematography Award at the Italian Golden Globes.
Un Flic - A Cop
Beginning with a remarkable bank robbery on a deserted beach front and also featuring a helicopter heist shot in real time, UN FLIC is perhaps Jean-Pierre Melville's most perfect synthesis of style and suspense. A wonderfully fatalistic study of loss and deception, and a distillation of Melville's interest in the codes of loyalty and honor, the film marks a fitting epitaph to one of the finest careers in contemporary cinema.
My Son - Mon garçon
In the middle of the night, a 7-year-old boy has gone missing. The crisis has drawn the child's father Julien (Guillaume Canet) back to a small, snowy town in eastern France in an effort to help. Julien travels abroad for work and has been essentially absent from his son's life since splitting with his wife (Melanie Laurent) a few years earlier. Fueled by his sense of guilt about neglecting his family, Julien is determined to do whatever it takes to find his son.
Nikita - La Femme Nikita
A young woman is arrested after her involvement in a bloody robbery and sentenced to life imprisonnment. However, she is given a chance for freedom when she is offered the opportunity to become a highly trained government assassin. After three years of intensive training and a final test, she embraces her new identity in exchange for her new law-abiding lifestyle.
Tout Va Bien
In 1972, newly radicalized Hollywood star Jane Fonda joined forces with cinematic innovator Jean-Luc Godard and collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin in an unholy artistic alliance that resulted in TOUT VA BIEN (Everything's All Right). This free-ranging assault on consumer capitalism and the establishment left tells the story of a wildcat strike at a sausage factory as witnessed by an American reporter (Fonda) and her has-been New Wave film director husband (Yves Montand). The Criterion Collection is proud to present this masterpiece of radical cinema, a caustic critique of society, marriage, and revolution in post-1968 France.
Belle de Jou
Catherine Deneuve's porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress's most iconic roles: Severine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her afternoon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Bunuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters' and its viewers'), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Bunuel's biggest hits.
Danton
Gerard Depardieu and Wojciech Pszoniak star in Andrzej Wajda's powerful, intimate depiction of the ideological clash between the earthy, man-of-the-people Georges Danton and icy Jacobin extremist Maximilien Robespierre, both key figures of the French Revolution. By drawing parallels to Polish "solidarity," a movement that was being quashed by the government as the film went into production, Wajda drags history into the present. Meticulous and fiery, DANTON has been hailed as one of the greatest films ever made about the Terror.
Au revoir les enfant
This late work from French writer-director Louis Malle tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie--until a secret is revealed. Based on events from Malle's own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
The Last Metro - Le dernier métro
Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve star as members of a French theater company living under the German occupation during World War II in Francois Truffaut's gripping, humanist character study. Against all odds--a Jewish theater manager in hiding; a leading man who's in the Resistance; increasingly restrictive Nazi oversight--the troupe believes the show must go on. Equal parts romance, historical tragedy, and even comedy, THE LAST METRO (Le dernier metro) is Truffaut's ultimate tribute to art overcoming adversity. Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1981 Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.
Le Samouraï
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. A razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture--with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology--maverick director Jean-Pierre Melville's masterpiece LE SAMOURAI defines cool.
Breathless
There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinema. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same.
Three Colors: Blue
In the devastating first film of the Three Colors Trilogy, Juliette Binoche gives a tour de force performance as Julie, a woman reeling from the tragic death of her husband and young daughter. But BLUE is more than just a blistering study of grief; it's also a tale of liberation, as Julie attempts to free herself from the past while confronting truths about the life of her late husband, a composer. Shot in sapphire tones by Slawomir Idziak, and set to an extraordinary operatic score by Zbigniew Preisner, BLUE is an overwhelming sensory experience. BLUE was a favorite at the 1993 Venice Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion, the Golden Osella (Cinematography), and many more.

Related databases in our collection

Film Literature Index
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IMDB