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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.

Located in the wilderness area of Campo, in Cameroon, and facing the company Socapalm which exploits oil palm trees, the village of Mabenanga lives on the freshwater shrimps fishing which is the pride of the restaurants of Kribi, Douala or Yaoundé.

The ancient site of the Lattara city has been excavated and studied for 15 years by an important team of French, Spanish, Italian and American archaeologists. It needed the development of an information system named Syslat, adapted to open air excavation, which allows the real time management of huge quantity of archaeological documents.

Boys, from two to nine year old, manage all alone their own cult to Nya, among the Minyanka people from Mali. The oldest is the chief of the cult. Children are very autonomous but they do not innovate and faithfully reproduce the ritual adults behavior, who never intervene during the cult.

Founded in June 1995 in Benin, the Ecumenical Christian Church “Jesus ' Blood”, which gathers about fifty believers, mixes deliberately in its liturgy some catholic, orthodox, apostolic and celestial Christian elements.

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.

This film was made in order to record the construction of the Vivitron, a tandem particle (heavy ion) superaccelerator developed by the Institut de recherches subatomiques (IreS) in Strasbourg.

In order to produce prototypes or very specific equipment, the CNRS and other governmental research organizations works with glass-blowers. This film is a tribute to those men who shape in glass, in Pyrex or in quartz, equipments for many chemistry and physics laboratories.

In Togo among Kabye people, trials by fire ordeal happen among truth masters in order to settle witchcraft cases which cannot be judged by usual men. This film shows two cases.

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.

In the Surumi village, located in Bolivia, a miraculous Virgin Mary is usually sheltered in a sanctuary. She is venerated during two great festivities which happen every August. The inhabitants and the farmers from the area express their devotion and their faith in very different ways.

In Eastern Greenland, a few families of hunters still maintain the nomadic way of life of their ancestors. Through recent images, historical documents and computer graphics, this film illustrates the considerable evolution of the East-Greenlandic population over a few decades. This includes the adoption by these ancient nomads of a new sedentary life-style.

At Joal in Senegal, a mother washes her new born baby, Maghet Sène.

Thousands of Ethiopian Jews (Falachas) are leaving their home villages and move to the country's capital, Addis Abeba, then trying to emigrate to Israel. Some of them are interviewed and tell about their hopes and problems, facing all the difficulties.

Sciences historians do not only study texts, they also sometimes try to reconstitute past experiences. In this film, Soraya Boudia, who works at the CRHST (Center for Research in History of Science and Technology), tries to reproduce the measures realized by Marie Curie in order to calibrate radioactive sources.

Nestled in an underwater grotto on the Provence coast, a tiny sponge only a few centimetres long yields its secrets to scientists. Its feeding behaviour is unique!

A pluridisciplinary team of researchers of Institut Pasteur in Dakar and ORSTOM is doing a comparative study of malarial infection in two villages in Senegal : Dielmo and Ndiop. These villages have been chosen because of the presence of the disease, permanent in the first village, seasonal in the second, and also because the population has agreed to cooperate in this research project. The scientists have arranged a program for monitoring each individual in the population on a day-by-day basis…

Proteins are macromolecules at the basis of the cell functions of living organisms. To know their functions, one must know their structure for the shape is closely related to the function. Using X-rays cristallography it is possible to visualize molecular structures. When an organic molecule in solution evaporate, a crystal deposit is formed. The crystals, lighted by an X-rays beam, produce a diffraction pattern which is used to reconstruct the structure of the molecule. The source for X…

Fifteen minutes in the strange and fascinating world of our nerve cells. Thanks to time lapse microcinematography, the complex phenomena occuring in the brain are visualized. We can see the birth of nerve cells, we can see them growing, working, dying…. These images brings to the fore two principal actors : the glial cells, building the structure and cleaning the brain, and the neurons, responsible of intercellular communication.

The forest of Fontainebleau forms a set of complex ecosystems rich in plant and animal species, a remarkable ecological heritage. The film retraces the geological history and human use of the forest.

In the Gard region an old lead and zinc mine still contains waste material. Rain dissolves this into large quantities of arsenic, which flows into a stream in the area. Marc Leblanc, a CNRS researcher, analyzes the contaminated water and seeks to understand the complex chemical reactions produced in it. He demonstrates the function of aerobic bacteria which contribute to limiting the pollution.

In 1991, CNRS founded the primatology station of Rousset, near Aix-en-Provence, designed for the breeding and raising of baboons for research purposes.

CO2 laser technology has always stimulated a high degree of interest and enthusiasm due to its operating performance. This video presents a brief overwiew of four dental applications : use of the cw CO2 laser in mucous membrance surgery - use of the cw CO2 laser in apical surgery - use of the cw CO2 laser in the treatment of dental decay - use of the long-pulse TEA CO2 laser as a drill. CO2 laser treatment benefits both the patient and the practitioner. It improves the quality of dental…

In order to preserve the biodiversity of the several million plant and animal species, a gigantic census is necessary. This is the goal of taxonomy, the science of the classification of living things. Seven researchers from different disciplines - biologists, botanists, entomologists, and paleontologists - describe their work.

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

In Puyuma, a south-east Taiwan village, the chamanes practising socio-cosmical relations are female. Namiko, an almost blind woman, is consulting them.

On the Botel Tobago Island in Taiwan, the first months of the lunar Yami calendar (July-August) are dedicated to buildings and collective festivities of competitive nature. They are punctuated with responsorial songs which can be sung in the Karyag way, that is to say “accompanied by banging hands”.

Nioro du Sahel in Mali has been twined with the town of Limours in France since 1983. In 1983, the twinning committee, with the help of the French Ministry for Cooperation and the Malian government, decided to equip the town with electricity. This report shows the electrification works and also many interviews of Nioro inhabitants, all having a passion with this revolution.

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.

In the Akungu camp, located in the Central African Republic, two special events are shot: in 1992, the mime of the delivery by a young pygmy woman and in 1995, the newborn Masiki's nursing.

Located in the Canary Island, the Themis telescope, conceived by the INSU and the CNRS, is an essential link in a chain of terrestrial observatories and satellites, allowing to answer to questions concerning the magnetic activity of the Sun, as temperature aberrations noticed between its surface and its corona.

In the context of evolution of species and geographical biodiversity, variations of recognition signals between individuals during courtship are studied. Drosophila teissieri, a fruit fly living in the African forest is used as a research animal model.

Expresso (Experiment for regional sources and sinks of oxidants) is the name of an international mission whose aim was to study tropical ecosystems emissions and their transformation in the lower atmosphere, which has for consequence the production of ozone.

The film describes the physical properties of granular materials (powders and grains), whose complex behaviour is between solids, liquids and gases.

Five researchers (Luc Montagnier, Daniel Prieur, Pierre Chambon, Alain Prochiantz and Christo Goridis) explain why animal models are used in the scientific research in order to understand mankind.

Through the description of his researches, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji depicts his daily life as a physicist in a human-sized team.

Two microbiologists, Daniel Prieur and Patrick Forterre study Thermophilic bacteria which are microorganism that thrives at relatively high temperatures (100°C or even more). Those bacteria proliferate near warm spring. A shorter version of this film is available, called "Extreme bacteria".

In March 2007, a new oceanographic ship of the INSU (French National Institute for Earth Sciences and Astronomy), the “Côtes de la Manche” cleared off. He is devoted to the study of biology, physics and chemistry of the coastal and estuarial ecosystems of the English Channel, and also of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This short film shows its first missions.

Presentation of the researches and the accomplished progresses about the trisomy 21, a chromosomal anomaly, which affects one person on 700 at birth.

The toromiro is a small tree which had grown on the Easter Island for about 35.000 years. Human pressure, linked to important climatic fluctuations and the massive importation of sheep during the 19th century, provoked its extinction. The toromiro was saved by Thor Heyerdahl in 1956, who preserved some seeds. An interdisciplinary program is devoted to its culture and its reintroduction on the island. This program needs some genetic investigations.

Formerly reserved for soldiers, cryptology is now used progressively in the civil and commercial society. The art of encrypting information interests now bankers, internet users and also… the public welfare system. The diffusion of cryptography ways is booming to the rhythm of the development of electronic communications.

Wolfgang Pauli imagined the neutrino in 1936 in order to save the principle of energy conservation. An experiment confirmed its existence 20 years later. Since then, physicists keep on tracking down this particle with more and more sophisticated and expensive means. This film is an investigation which shows three different ways to catch neutrinos.

Near the city of Strasbourg, the Centre for primatology Louis Pasteur is dedicated to the breeding of primates for the pharmaceutical laboratories and also to the study of their behavior.

In order to obtain a circulatory trajectory in a particle accelerator, magnets are used to deviate the electron beam. The beam losts energy which is emitted at the exterior of the accelerator, in a form of light, in a variety of wavelength, going from the infrared to the X-rays: this is the synchrotron radiation. This film recounts the use of the synchrotron radiation, from 1962 to 2000.

Experts who study computer viruses can have different views. Some are able to exterminate them thank to the study of their mechanism. Some are theorists and work on studies linking mathematics, informatics and biology. Some also are fascinated by these strange creations and devote well-information provided websites to them. In each case, viruses arouse passion.

Many types of software, management ones essentially, which are used today, were conceived about twenty years ago. In this time, the limited memory capacities forced computer engineers to code the date into two numbers. On the 1st January of 2000, the numbers 00 will be displayed, succeeding to 99. And then, 00 could mean 1900, and it could have serious consequences. In this film, four computer engineers explain the problems cause, show possible solutions and try to evaluate the cost due to the…

The most ancient metallurgic techniques and the ones from the 2000 ' s present sometimes analogies. Through the reconstitution of these techniques, archaeologists try to understand how metals used to be obtained in the Iron Age.

Maulidi Ya Hom is a religious performance stemming from Muslim Sufi orders, here held in Zanzibar, Tanzania. It was very often associated with mortification practices which are nowadays abandoned. On the point of disappearing, Maulidi Ya Hom continued to survive in the countryside.

In Diraralei, a little village on the Botel-Tobago Island (located next to Taiwan), Yami people are divided into two places, in accordance with their age. The elders live in the primeval village, while the young people often occupy temporarily the village on the top. According to the place of residence, the cares given to the children are different.