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Mendevin, an Uldeme living in the extreme North of the Cameroon, is a farmer breeding small-livestock. He is also an excellent musician and harp maker. This film shows precisely through long takes the different phases of the making of a harp.

Prithwindra Mukherjee, an ethnomusicologist, defines and exposes the Kîrtana principles, a kind of dance and ritual song celebrating Krishna, the eighth incarnation of the love deity, and Rhada. This musical and danced kind comes from a very old cultural practice dating from the 4th century and has evolved for centuries.

During the 19th century a craze for microscopy developed in England and France. Microscopy technicians like Harold Dalton created real paintings on a microscopic scale using micro-organisms (diatoms and radiolarians) and fragments of butterfly wing.

Study of the Dogon sculpture in Mali, from a corpus of 150 sculpted granary locks, conserved at the Musée de l ' Homme of Paris. These objects were brought back during diverse missions, from 1906 to 1971.

In Georgia Republic, every year during three days, pilgrims meet near two sanctuaries consecrated to the deified queen Tamar (12th century) and her son Lasha. They celebrate them with prayers, singings and sacrifices. This film tries to reproduce this celebration in its several dimensions as it was presented in 1991.

Banda Gbambiya musicians, who live in the North-West of Central African Republic, have a collective musical practice using multiple portative resonators xylophones. The village has its own orchestra composed of four xylophones, which are played during ritual ceremonies or entertainments.

Seven women and three men tell us why they started a secret diary in a specific moment of their life.

1969, in Porto-Nevo, located in Dahomay (currently called Benin), at the occasion of diverse rituals accomplished by the king in his palace, his wives execute a series of dances. They form a real court ballet.

In Kérala, located in South India, a tradition of short-lived paints made to communicate with gods is perpetuated from father to son. In this film, Mr. Kurup wanders in houses and in temples to celebrate propitiatory rituals, called Kalam ellettu pattu, painting directly on the floor.

Among the Ekonda of Zaire, the most important moment in a woman's life is undoubtedly the birth of her first child. The young nursing mother, called Walé, returns to her parents where she is confined for 2 to 5 years. Chantal, a young woman living in the village of Ikongo will be coming out of reclusion. She prepares a performance of dances and songs.

In Cape Town, South Africa, the new year is a time when thousands of people put on bright uniforms and make up their faces in black and white. They all come from the "coloured" community, one of the victims of segregation and apartheid. The new year festivals consist in competitions between troupes of "Minstrels", choirs and brass bands. They provide an occasion for tightening community bonds as well as for forgetting about the hardships of ordinary life in South Africa. In 1994, just before…

This film shows the restoration of an Osiris statuette (exceptional because of its height), dating from the 25th or 26th Egyptian dynasty. The first operation consists in describing very precisely the exterior aspect of the statuette. Then a cleaning of its surface is done. Finally, a detailed study of its production and its decoration is done.

2 - Technical developments around the turn of the century. The image-recording devices and early filming techniques used by the successors of Muybridge and Marey, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 3 - Early applications. Presentation, by scientific discipline, of films shot between 1895 and 1911, which required various especially adapted or recently invented filming techniques.

The research in textual genetics done in the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes permits the reconstruction, word after word, of the progression of the writer ' s creative thought. The genetic criticism is here applied to the first lines of a Herodias ' s autograph document, written by Flaubert in 1876-1877.

In Sardinia, music, songs and dances are part and parcel of daily life. These different musical and vocal traditions are more particularly expressed during traditional and religious celebrations.

Simha Arom, Suzanne Fürniss submit to a group of Aka Pygmies short pieces of music played on the synthesizer, asking them to accept or refuse various renditions modulating the system of intervals according to their suitability for the traditional polyphonic repertoire. They are offered three types of tests: - the partita, where a polyphony alien to the Aka's is used to make them distinguish the parameters of form, part and timbre before considering the actual musical scales. -…

A history of the processes used in photography, from its beginnings to the present day, and the way images are formed within a modern emulsion.

The task of the Institute of Research and History of Texts is to study handwritten books.

The elaboration of a collective work, the result of the contributions of four artists who use different means of expression : the painter Marti Pey, the photographer André Villers, the writer Michel Butor and the musician Patrick Michel.

The Sardana is a round dance performed in the open, executed on the occasion of various festivities which take place during the year. It is danced to the sound of the Cobla, the traditional Catalan orchestra.

At Sao Paulo, in Brazil, an employers' organization, the SESC, confided the architect Lina Do bardi with the task of restoring an unused fac tory, the Fabrica da Pompeia, and setting it up as a culture nd leisure center. What was designed as a center for a small area is now frequented by the entire population of Sao Paulo.

A farmer in Steenwerck, a village of northern France, decides to build a weathercock on his roof and gradually shapes it into an airplane.

In Spain, every year, the Diablos celebrate the feast of their patron saint, St Blaise.

Presentation of traditional music from Rajasthan, India.

During the shooting of Jean Rouch's "Dyonisos", G. Dieterlen, E. Fulchignoni and other participating friends recall their meeting and their research with the filmmaker.

Presentation of various songs, dances and music from Madhya Pradesh, India.

Extracts from the earliest scientific films, made between 1872 and 1911 and demonstrating different cinematographic inventions.

Tadeusz Kantor talks with Denis Bablet about his painting and his career. He describes the currents and painters who influenced him and presents his paintings at the Galerie de France exhibition in Paris in 1982.

At the invitation of poet Yves Bonnefoy, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges gives a lecture on poetic creativity, at the Collège de France.

Interviews with Czech stage designer Josef Svoboda, showing his work, his many activities and his creative approach.

During the interview by Gilles Sandier, Ariane Mnouchkine, a stage director, talks about her company, the "Theatre du Soleil" and their shows "1789", "1793", "lL'Age d'or" and particularly "Mephisto", after Klaus mann.

Excerpts filmed from the play"La Funeste passion du docteur Forenstein" (Doctor Forentsein's Gruesome Passion) written and directed by Philippe Adrien, at the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry.

Arman, sculptor of the Nice school of new realists, has built his home in Vence. It is here, during he summer, that he devotes himself to his favourite creation: splitting objects open to show them from the inside.

Document on persian music recorded in Paris.