Sophie BENSADOUN

A faire

A pandemic is a complex phenomenon, an invariant for humans in their environment. In fact, from the Neolithic era to the present day, from the cattle plague to Sars-Cov-2, the emergence of new infectious diseases is often the result of changes that humans force on their environment. The emergence of a global health crisis in 2020 is a real warning sign on the uses of life. In this documentary, discover how biologists, anthropologists, mathematicians and historians can help us learn…

In the prospect of the European elections on 25 May 2014, this series of four films revisits some issues about Europe. The first film in the series is a depiction of the European citizenship that emerged in 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty. It grants a unique new political status to citizens: that of being a citizen of another state from their own. In this respect, it is carrying a new vision.

While the most beautiful crystals are found in nature, they are also common in our everyday life. And they can be produced by living organims. Crystal is a state of matter : it is solid whose regular faces reveal a well ordered internal structure.

In the prospect of the European elections on 25 May 2014, this series of four films revisits some issues about Europe. The second film is a discussion about the notion of European identity. Being a European citizen entitles all nationals of its 28 member countries to the same rights, which raises the question of rights harmonisation among nations with extremely diverse cultures and social practices. What do we have in common? Is there a European identity?

Crystallography includes all scientific methods allowing to reveal the structure of crystalline materials, and their associated properties. Each crystal is made of constituents invisible to the human eye or under a simple microscope. Using an electron microscope and its electron beam, crystallographers can obtain an image of a given sample magnified up to nearly five thousand times.

In the prospect of the European elections on 25 May 2014, this series of four films revisits some issues about Europe. The third film takes a look back on the European project that was related to preserving Peace, which had been based on an economic agreement with the idea of building Europe as a more political entity. The link thus created is now proving to be rather false and is largely part of the citizen's dislike of Europe. The feeling of disempowerment of citizens is real when faced…

In the prospect of the European elections on 25 May 2014, this series of four films revisits some issues about Europe. The final and fourth film in the series addresses the sovereignty of each state and the difficulties encountered in working together. The functioning of the various governing bodies of Europe (Councils, Parliament and committees) is briefly described.

To address the societal concerns raised by the impact of natural and artificial radioactivity on humans and the environment, seven laboratories of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics (IN2P3) of the CNRS have pooled their resources to create a national platform for radioactivity analysis: the Becquerel Network. Patrick Chardon and Addil Sellam who are engineers in two of the seven network member laboratories explain its advantages. Enabling on-site interventions,…

In the 19th century, Jean-Baptiste André Godin, a socialist captain of industry, decided to bring to his workers the products of their work, as an equivalent of wealth. He became an architect and built the Familistère in Aisne, where 2000 people lived on for nearly a century. Michel Lallement, sociologist, introduces J.-B. A. Godin and explains his approach. It was not a utopian construct but rather a practical project, a model of life building upon a reformed housing improving the health…

With the short-term depletion of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal, etc...) and the deterioration of our environment looming, the use of renewable power sources is becoming essential. The energy transition has thus become one of the major technological and scientific challenges of the 21st century, with non-carbon renewable power sources representing a major alternative to fossil fuels. However, their exceptional potential is strongly offset by the storage problems caused by the intermittent…

Jean-Michel Salles, an economist of the environment at the Montpellier Laboratory for theorical and applied economy (France), is interested in the risks of the pollination decline on the agricultural production. This loss is evaluated in an economical way. The researcher in this film ponders the consequences of this threat on the consumers.

In this short film shot in the Claude Bernard University, located in Lyon (France), and inside its palaeontological collections, Gildas Merceron, a palaeontologist, evokes the major biodiversity extinctions. He explains why and the consequences of the disappearing in mass of many species, through the example of dinosaurs.

Virginie Maris, a philosopher of the environment at the Center for functional and evolving ecology of Montpellier (France), questions the problem of the politics for the biodiversity preservation. For her, a philosopher said to be “from the ground”, has an important role to play in the development of the projects.

Nature can have different values: ecological, esthetical, patrimonial or economical ones. It depends on the adopted point of view. Wilfried Thuiller, a researcher in ecology and biostatistics from the Laboratory for Alpine Ecology located in Grenoble (France), emphasizes the predominance of the economical value until now.

To give a value to a species more than to another shapes our relationship to nature and to the world. Interviewed in the Regional Nature Park of the Camargue (France), Vincent Devictor, a biologist of the preservation at the Institute for evolution science of Montpellier, invites us in this short film to think about it.

Society has a growing interest in the economic value of services given by Nature. Facing this demand, getting stronger and stronger, evaluation tools have been developed. Jean-Michel Salles, an economist of the environment at the Montpellier Laboratory for theorical and applied economy, describes in this short film the main methods which allow to estimate the price of Nature.

Yldiz Aumeeruddy-Thomas, an ethnologist from the Montpellier Center for Functional and Evolving Ecology, explains in this short film the concept of agroecosystem: the interaction between the human practices (almost agricultural) and the ecological systems.

The acceleration of the species disappearing leads to a mass extinction era. We are witnesses and actors of this biodiversity crisis. Vincent Devictor, a biologist of the preservation at the Institute for evolution science of Montpellier (France), in this film invites us to think about our responsibility.

Wilfried Thuiller, a researcher in ecology and biostatistics from the Laboratory for Alpine Ecology located in Grenoble (France), questions the problem of the biodiversity preservation in France and in Europe. Will the national parks, the natural reserves and the preserved spaces (as Natura 2000) remain sufficient in a period of important changes?

Virginie Maris, a philosopher of the environment at the Center for functional and evolving ecology of Montpellier (France), recounts the birth of the biodiversity concept and the notions that it recovers.

Scientific researches have allowed to understand the causes of the biodiversity crisis. Preservation techniques have been developed. Vincent Devictor, a biologist of the preservation at the Institute for evolution science of Montpellier (France), emphasizes the importance of a reflection concerning the connection to nature and to the world chosen by Mankind.

The environmental ethic concerns the relationship between mankind and nature and it also questions the separation between human and non-human beings. Virginie Maris, a philosopher of the environment at the Center for functional and evolving ecology of Montpellier (France), explains in this short film its foundations.

Palaeontologists are also interested in biodiversity. Through the study of the species morphological diversity, they allow us to improve our understanding of the consequences due to the climatic and environmental changes. Interviewed in the Claude Bernard University located in Lyon (France), Gildas Merceron explains in this short film this approach.

Interviewed in the Regional Nature Park of the Camargue (France), Vincent Devictor, a biologist of the preservation at the Institute for evolution science of Montpellier, defines in this film the biodiversity in relation to his field of study: the living.

This animationdepicts what would happen in our daily lives if biodiversity were to disappear. This is a story seen through the eyes and imagination of a child, who sees an ordinary world lose all the goods and services brought by biodiversity,which he thechild and certainly ourselves did not suspect..

Animal and vegetal species find ways to adapt to climatic or environmental changes, through migration or acclimatization. Wilfried Thuiller, a researcher in ecology and biostatistics from the Laboratory for Alpine Ecology located in Grenoble (France), presents in this short film the last researches concerning this topic.

Wielfried Thuiller, a researcher in ecology and biostatistics, defines in this short film the concept of biodiversity as an ensemble composed of the genes, the species and the ecosystems. He explains the functional and phylogenetic diversity. He emphasizes the dynamic characteristic of the biodiversity through the evocation of the species diversification.

Wilfried Thuiller, a researcher in ecology and biostatistics, is interested in the impact of the climatic changes on species. After a presentation of the laboratory and of the botanical garden of the Alpine resort Joseph Fourier (France), he evokes one of his work devices: the mathematical modelizations or statistics.

At the Claude Bernard University located in Lyon (France), Gildas Merceron, a palaeontologist, tries to understand the extinction of great apes species 8.5 million years ago in Eurasia. He studies within this frame the antelope and its diet at this era.

Interviewed in the Montpellier botanical garden (France), Yldiz Aumeeruddy-Thomas, an ethnologist from the Montpellier Center for Functional and Evolving Ecology, evokes in this short film the social sciences interest in the connections between society and nature. Man has always transformed nature to appropriate it and to domestic it. These reciprocal links boost the construction of the civilizations history and of our identity.