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From the birth of physicist Pierre Auger to the creation of CERN in 1952, this film tells the story of four great French physicists. Pierre Auger, Bertrand Goldschmidt, Jacques Labeyrie and Georges Charpak tell us about their career, their work and the personalities they met and worked with. A history of nuclear power in France unfolds throughout their interviews supported by numerous archive images. As a result of the work of Pierre Auger and Bertrand Goldschmidt, which had led to the creation…

From September 1996 to January 1999, anthropologist Christian Lallier filmed the construction site of the new technical centre for wood and furniture which had been relocated to Bordeaux. This film, which was shot thirteen years later, is an immersion at the heart of a project that shows a nascent workplace emerging from the professional relations between the various trades in the field. The building, as it is erected from its foundations, is a symbol of the challenges inherent to this…

Les Muong sont le deuxième groupe ethnique le plus important de la province Thanh Hoa du nord du Vietnam. Au village Lo, la famille du chamane et ses anciens malades organisent cette année, au mois de mars de l'année lunaire, la grande fête du cotonnier, la "danse autour des fleurs". Ce sont les femmes qui, autour de l'Au May (herboriste, guérisseuse et chamane) dirigent cette cérémonie, les hommes n'y ayant que des rôles secondaires. Il est rare aujourd'hui de pouvoir assister à cette fête…

Le Nouvel an chinois est à la fois une grande réunion de famille à laquelle sont associés les ancêtres, un hommage aux dieux du ciel et un exorcisme au cours duquel on chasse l'ancien pour accueillir le nouveau. Patrice Fava, qui vit en Chine depuis plus de vingt ans, nous fait partager les rites domestiques célébrés dans sa famille chinoise selon les coutumes du pays de Confucius, puis la ferveur des habitants de Pékin qui vont rendre un culte aux divinités taoïstes du Monastère des…

Fabienne Le Houérou, an historian, a researcher and a filmmaker at IREMAM, conducted a long investigation (ten years of research) to " Arba wa nuss " (4 and 1/2), one of the poorest neighborhoods of the large periphery Cairo, Egypt. In this area, two displaced communities coexist: the Copts, that have fled persecution against Christians in Upper Egypt, and Sudan, having left South Sudan genocide. The researcher delivers a summary of her work and shows how spirituality and Christian religious…

"Words from Asia and the Pacific" is a series of interviews conducted by Jean-François Sabouret, Director of the Asie-Imasie Network (CNRS), with humanities researchers and experts on Asia and the Pacific. Claudine Salmon was born in 1938 in Bruyères, in the Vosges. In 1962, she graduated in Chinese from the School of Oriental Languages. At the same time, she studied law (BA in 1963), literature (BA in 1964) and graduated from EHESS, 6th section, in 1969. Wife of Denys Lombard ("Le carrefour…

Professor José-Alain Sahel received the 2012 CNRS innovation medal. He is professor at UPMC andUniversity College London, head of ophthalmology at the Centre hospitalier national d'ophtalmologie des Quinze-Vingts and at the Rothschild Ophthalmological Foundation, as well as director of the Institut de la vision (joint Vision Institute of UPMC, CNRS and Inserm) in Paris. He discusses his team's work on the mechanisms of maintaining central vision that can be affected in certain pathologies or…

"Words from Asia and the Pacific" is a series of interviews conducted by Jean-François Sabouret, Director of the Asie-Imasie Network (CNRS), with humanities researchers and experts on Asia and the Pacific. Bruno Dagens, who was born on 19 February 1935 in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, is a historian, archaeologist and Sanskritist. He spent his childhood in North Africa and his youth in Strasbourg. He was introduced to archaeology and research by Daniel Schlumberger during excavations at…

C'est dans la région du Shaanbei, dans la boucle du fleuve Jaune que se construisent les yaodong. Ces habitation en voûte, à l'origine troglodytes et désormais adossées à la montagne, sont construites sans plan d'architecte, selon un savoir-faire transmis oralement. Les étapes de la construction suivent le travail très précis des maîtres tailleurs de pierre, des maîtres menuisiers, des maîtres de Fengshuiet des manoeuvres, tous vivant dans des yaodong avec leur familles. Une rencontre avec ces…

Dirk Van Delft, director of the “Museum Boerhaave” of Leiden (Netherlands) tells how superconductivity was discovered in Heike kamerling Onnes ' Cryogenics laboratory. He contributes useful details about this historic day, and re establishes the truth about the team that observed this phenomenon. This film is a bonus accompanying “100% conductive : Superconductors”.

The IFRAF gathers six laboratories specialized in the cold atoms manipulation. Since 1984, this physics domain has considerably developed and its applications have increased. This DVD contains two films which explain, in an entertaining way, what are the cold atoms and present one application: the atomic clock.

Portrait of Sébastien Steyer, a paleontologist and rare specialist of the Permian period.

At the occasion of the bicentenary of Evariste Galois ' s birth, this film evokes the life and the work of one of the greatest mathematics genius, whose theory has revolutionized modern mathematics and physics. Born in 1811, he died at the age of 21 following a duel. He discovered the world of mathematics at the age of 16 and his papers were refused by the French Académie des Sciences. His theory started to be recognized and understood only 30 years later.

Shot in the Luz Village, in the South-East Portugal, this film presents the Pinha feast, celebrated in winter, within the frame of the Carnival festivities.

This film presents the researches done at the CEMES (Center for the elaboration of materials and for structural studies), led by Michel Mitov, concerning the molecules of cholesteric liquid crystals. These molecules gather to form helicoidal structures which reflect selectively the light, a phenomenon that depends on the helice thread. Found commonly into nature, they are also largely use in the industry, to product thermal detectors or cosmetics for instance. A new use has been discovered by…

The Montpellier “Maison des sciences de l'Homme” hosted a meeting concerning the launch of a new research program: the ALIBI program (ALzheimer, Immigration and BIlingualism). During two years, a team composed of linguists, neuropsychologists, a socio-demographer, geriatricians and gerontologists studies the consequences of the Alzheimer ' s disease on the language of a population of Arabic language that has immigrated to France. The objective of this program is to adapt in a linguistic and…

The Lady of Elche, a remarkable stone bust from the 5th or 4th century BC, exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid, is a masterpiece of the Iberian art. The archaeologist Pierre Rouillard, with a team composed of archaeologists, a geologist and a geomatics engineer, recounts its story and tries to found its identity, a goddess or a princess, through the search for its birthplace, the quarries of the El Ferriol valley near Alicante, and the matter in which it has been…

Sébastien Steyer, a paleontologist, is one of the rare specialists of the Permian period, when Earth was only one continent: Pangaea. At the end of this period, 90 % of the living species disappeared. Some of them, the vertebrates which live before the dinosaurs and which leave water to settle on earth, are the main forgotten of paleontology.

On the 8th April 1911, whilst observing mercury at the temperature of liquid helium -269°C, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered a new and surprising physics phenomenon: superconductivity! This phenomenon is made apparent by two remarkable effects. Superconductors not only conduct an electric current perfectly, they also expel magnetic fields and make magnets levitate. A hundred years after its ' discovery, superconductivity still remains a huge enigma. Many laboratories are…

A special evening to celebrate Edgar Morin's 60th career year at the CNRS was organized on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. Various personalities from the world of research but also from politics came to pay tribute to the outstanding career of this global thinker. In a speech that was both funny and moving, Edgar Morin recalled when he joined the CNRS in 1951, at the age of 31. This gave the opportunity for the sociologist to outline the incredible freedom he enjoyed as a researcher in…

At the occasion of the 2011 CNRS Gold medal ceremony, Jules Hoffman, a famous biologist, CNRS emeritus senior researcher and teacher at the Strasbourg University, evokes the science and its drifting. When he started his researches, science was synonym of a great hope in the world. He has noticed a certain mistrust of science and he proposes ways to attenuate it.

This film draws the portrait of Jules Hoffmann, who received in 2011 the CNRS Gold Medal and the 2011 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. This biologist, emeritus senior professor and also teacher at the Strasbourg University dedicated his works to the study of the genetic and molecular processes which are responsible of the insects ' innate immunity.

As a consequence of the demographic explosion, the fresh water shortage will be one of the major issues in the world in the decades to come. Among the existing solutions, the water desalination is meeting expansion. This film presents the principles of the different methods of seawater desalination and their implementations. It draws up the balance sheet of the actual researches in this domain and it deals also with the socio-economical stakes which depend on it.

In this short film, Isabelle Rico-Lattes from the IMRCP (Laboratory for Molecular Interactions & Chemical and Photochemical Reactivity) explains what the green chemistry is. It consists in a chemistry resolutely turned to the future, cleaner, using catalysts which can be recycled and less solvent and reagents.

Today, an hour of sunlight on Earth is the equivalent of the worldwide energy consummation on a year. In this short film, Daniel Lincot, a researcher from the LECIME (Laboratory for Electrochemistry, Interfaces Chemistry and Modelizations for Energy), explains the exploitable potential everywhere in the world, where chemists play an important role in the conception of solar panels.

Rituals and daily life of the Yamis, the Men Of-the-Island (Tau Du-Pungsu) of Botel-Tobago, a small coral island located off the coast of Taiwan, filmed in the 1970's. Their community practices the irrigated cultivation of taro as well as dry cultivation such as millet, and fishing. These activities differ according to the three seasons of the lunar year. The whole life of the islanders is centered on the fishing season of the migrating fish, in large and small assembled pirogues - flying…

In this short film, Georges Massiot evokes the taxol, a molecule coming from the Pacific yew. It was discovered in the sixties, when the United States of America decided to declare the war to cancer. During the eighties, the felling of many European yews of the Gif-sur-Yvette campus allowed Pierre Potier and his team to discover a molecule looking like the taxol…

In this short film, Philippe Garrigues, a researcher from the Institute for Molecular Sciences, evokes the water polluting, due to pharmaceutical products. When someone ingests a drug, this one will not be completely metabolized: between 50 and 90 % will end up in the wastewater. For some pharmaceutical products, the purification rate is relatively low. The impact on the environment is being actually studying.

In this short film, Philippe Colomban, a researcher from the LADIR, evokes the restoration of stained glasses. As the building moves, they get naturally damaged. The goal is to identify, on set stained glasses, the original parts from the ones which have been replaced during a non-documented restoration…

In this short film, Marcel Hibert, a researcher from the Laboratory for Therapeutic Innovation, discusses a new advance in the treatment of autism. Since a decade, a hormone was discovered: the oxytocin. With its receptor, it plays a key-role in the relationship between a new-born and his social group. This discovery could lead to the development of a drug against autism…

In this short film, Nathalie Karpel Vel Leitner, from the Laboratory for “Water Chemistry and Microbiology” (LCME), exposes different innovative processes concerning the cleaning up of water, as the electron gun or the use of a catalyst… Indeed, most of the industrial sectors use water in their process of production, which has for consequence pollution. Many innovative processes are being studied…

Batteries are devices able to transform chemical energies into electric energies. Actual research allows to glimpse an amelioration of the stocking capacity of a scale factor of two even a scale factor of three, in a decade or two. In this short film, Jean-Marie Tarascon from the “Laboratory for reactivity and solids chemistry” (LRCS) explains these new techniques.

In this short film, Gérard Férey and his team, who have developed hollow sphere-shaped molecules in which we could notably trap the greenhouse gases, explains this process.

In Isabelle Rico-Lattes ' laboratory, researchers use the green chemistry concepts which revolutionize, among others, the pharmaceutical drugs sector.

A tumor is a set of cells which grows in an exponential and anarchic way.Iin this short film, Gérard Déleris, a researcher from the Laboratory for Pharmaco-chemistry, explains the chemists ' researches who work on very specialized antitumor treatment.

In this short film, Philippe Walter, a researcher from the LC2RMF, explains how they analyze residues from some well-conserved Egyptian objects, as make-up flasks…

The pollutants are numerous and some can persist in the environment over several decades. In this short film, Philippe Garrigues, a researcher from the Institute for Molecular Sciences explain the different detection techniques which are used.

Daniel Lincot, a researcher from the “Laboratory for electrochemistry, chemistry of interfaces and modeling for energy” (LECIME), evokes the dozen of existing photovoltaic industries. A few are exploited, as the silicon solar cells, but new cells have appeared as the thin films or the dye-sensitized solar cell. The aim is to decrease the costs and to facilitate the recycling.

Marcel Hilbert, a researcher from the Laboratory for Therapeutic Innovation, evokes the creation by many researchers of a national chemical library which contains 40 000 molecules made by chemists and about 15 000 collected natural substances extracts. Robots are used to test them and maybe discover new biologically active molecules and thus develop new pharmaceutical drugs.

It is essential to understand the ultimate chemistry which happens in catalytic converters in order to filter the toxic gazes produced by the engines and transform them into harmless residues. With Frédéric Thibault-Starzyk (CNRS) from the LCS (Laboratory for catalysis and spectrochemistry).

In this short film, Georges Massion from the “Laboratory for Medicinal chemistry of the Epigenetic Targeting of Cancer” presents some examples of molecules from the sea which have furthered the clinical research.

In this short film, Philippe Colomban, a researcher from the LADIR, presents the works of scientists who use the laser and the Raman scattering technique to identify the pigments and the adjuvants in the rock paintings done by the San people in South Africa.

Within the frame of the sustainable development, researchers try to develop batteries inspired by the living chemistry. In this short film, Jean-Marie Tarascon from the LRCS (Laboratory for reactivity and solids chemistry) describes these researches.

The materials developed by Gérard Férey ' s laboratory are porous. They can consequently be used as molecular cages and contain pharmaceutical drugs.

"Words from Asia and the Pacific" is a series of interviews conducted by Jean-François Sabouret, Director of the Asie-Imasie Network (CNRS), with humanities researchers and experts on Asia and the Pacific. Christian Huetz de Lemps is a French geographer who was born on 12 May 1938 in Charenton-le-Pont (94). While being a top-level sportsman, he continued his geography studies. In 1961, he was a member of the French volleyball team and that same year raked second at the "agrégation"…

The Words from Asia and the Pacific series is made up of interviews conducted by Jean-François Sabouret, Director of the Réseau Asie - Imasie (CNRS), with humanities researchers, experts on Asia and the Pacific. Jacques Gernet is a French sinologist who was born born on 22 December 1921 in Algiers, Algeria. He was influenced by his father, a Hellenist and anthropologist, who was influenced by the sociological tradition of Durkheim. Between November 1942 and September 1945, he had to…

"Words from Asia and the Pacific" is a series of interviews conducted by Jean-François Sabouret, Director of the Asie-Imasie Network (CNRS), with humanities researchers and experts on Asia and the Pacific. Gérard Fussman, who was born on May 17, 1940 in Lens (Pas-de-Calais), is a French Indianist. An admirer of Georges Dumézil's writings, he began learning Sanskrit in his first year at the ENS, even as he intended to join the French School at Athens. He graduated as an agrégé in Classics…

Nicole Limondin-Lozouet, malacologist, presents her profession during the shooting of the film"Néandertal, l'homme de tous climats" (Neanderthal a human of all climes), on the archaeological site of Caours in the Somme, France. She examines the remains of terrestrial and fluvial snails in order to reconstruct the succession of landscapes and climatic environments of the Quaternary period.

Patrick Auguste, as a zooarchaeologist and palaeontologist, describes his activities during the shooting of the film "Néandertal, l'homme de tous climats" (Neanderthal a human of all climes) on the archaeological site of Caours in the Somme, France. His studies on animal bones allow him to reconstruct the behaviour of Neanderthal man in the ecological context of the time. In particular, he describes the butchery activities practised by Neanderthals 123,000 years ago.

Boris Cyrulnk, a neuropsychatrist, evokes the different ways to see the Alzheimer ' s disease in France and China.