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Le terme Papou évoque chez nous un homme, une lance à la main, vêtu d'un étui pénien proéminent et d'un os dans le nez. Mais qui sont les femmes, les soeurs ou les mères de ces hommes et de quoi ont-elles l'air ? Pour éclairer cette question, un ethnologue et sa fille documentent les activités quotidiennes des femmes orokaiva, en Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée, et leur donnent la parole pour évoquer les joies et les difficultés qui ont marqué leur vie. Au-delà de l'intimité évidente entre elles et…

About 4 000 years ago, Assyrian merchants established a commercial settlement in the ancient city of Kaneš, within Central Anatolia. They came from Aššur, north of Mesopotamia. We have come to understand their history through their writings on clay tablets that have stood the test of time: more than 22 500 cuneiform tablets have been unearthed from the archaeological site of Kültepe. How did these Mesopotamian clay tablets arrived in Anatolia and what do they tell us? The voice of…

Protected by the topography, mountain valleys have always been diverse places for plants, animals, and even languages. In the foothills of the Himalayas lies the Yongning Plain, known locally as the "Central Plain": home of the Na culture. Alexis Michaud, a linguist at the CNRS, has been studying the Na language for over 10 years. Year after year, he has been welcomed by numerous family members of Tashi, an anthropologist and linguist specialising in the Na culture. …

There is a unique territory in France called "le Croissant", which runs along the Massif Central from the west of the Limousin to the east of the Auvergne. To the north, this territory is bordered by the area of the Oïl languages, which includes French, and to the south by the area where Occitan (or langue d'oc) is traditionally spoken. In 2017, around twenty researchers, most of them from the CNRS, joined together to participate in a multidisciplinary project, the ANR ""Les…

On the site of the Saint-Gond marshes, in the French Marne department, researchers from different disciplines are studying a Neolithic site which is 20 km long and 2 km wide and has the highest concentration of hypogea in France. This is due to the flint richness of the soils and the amount of mining that caused a high human density. This site was discovered at the end of the 19th century by Baron Joseph de Baye, who collected a large amount of archaeological materials. Since 2013, a…

In the Notre-Dame-des-Fontaines chapel in the area of Nice, a team of interdisciplinary researchers is studying frescoes dating from the 15th century to understand how they deteriorate and thus better restore them. As part of the Fiat Lux program, this project is to collect and feed a large amount of images and information into a digital platform. Using different imaging techniques, these researchers will reconstruct works in 3D, probe their relief, make out successive repaints or even detect…

What do we know about the Indian Ocean? It was not the result of an extraordinary discovery but rather of successive explorations and exchanges between the civilizations of the West and the East. Historians trace the history of its representation through the study of nautical charts from Antiquity to the 18th century. They thus show us that the narrative of its fabrication is strongly linked to its representation and that the maps have thus contributed to giving this ocean its meaning and…

Le Dorat celebrated its fifty-first Ostensions (from the Latin ostendere: show, exhibit) from 28 March to 22 May 2016, during which the relics of the village's protectors Israel and Theobald are worshipped. These devotional celebrations which date back to the Middle-Ages take place every seven years in some twenty towns in Limousin according to a well-established ritual and particularly well respected by Le Dorat denizens. During these festivities, the inhabitants are widely involved, as much…

Within 35 minutes the film explores the inspiration and the story behind MUSE, why it was needed how it came into life over a nine year long development phase. It highlights the needed international European cooperation to realise the project and the participation of some of the hundreds of researchers, technicians and engineers involved. The innovative technology of MUSE and the front-line science done with it are discussed as well. Also the delicate installation process and the moment of…

This film takes a look back on the career of Muriel Labonnelie, a scholar specialised in Greco-Roman ophthalmology in her research at the LAMS laboratory (Laboratoire d'Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale/laboratory of molecular and structural archaeology) into collyrium tablets. These tablets designate local action medications used on the conjunctiva to treat eye conditions. They provide valuable information on Roman medicine. They started to be listed as early as the eighteenth century…

Established in 2009, the Haut-Vicdessos valley Human and Environment Observatory (OHM, Observatoires Hommes-Milieux) in one of those entities created in France and in the world by the CNRS's INEE (Institut Ecologie et Environnement/ Institute of Ecology and Environment) and pooled together as part of the DRIIHM excellence laboratory, or Labex. Its director, Didier Galop, makes a presentation of this cross-disciplinary observatory whose mission is to observe, document and investigate into…

In a remote village in the Tyva Republic in southern Siberia (Russia), Vera, a Russian shaman carries on the local religious traditions as part of a shamanic association called “The Three Summits”. She heads this association together with Baazan the widow of the late shaman grand master Kyrgys Huurak whose disciple Vera was, alongside with Anya who manages day-to-day business. Besides the main rituals performed in a shamanic outfit, the film follows Vera in her daily tasks, especially during…

About 27 % of French mainland coastline is eroding. These areas became increasingly vulnerable in recent years. With a growing population living less than 25 kilometres from sea shores in France and all over the world new challenges are looming. Not only erosion and receding coastlines but also major societal issues. There are three types of coastal environments in France: estuaries, cliffs and sandy beaches. As they have extremely different morphologies, the processes causing changes and…

World War I marked the entry of the 20th century into mass slaughter. To preserve the memory of all the soldiers who died for France, war memorials were erected throughout the country at the beginning of the 1920s. Endowed with multiple forms and meanings, they are a precious testimony to post-war mentalities. Several historians have highlighted the various meanings of these monuments in response to the need for mourning for families and the need to commemorate the French Republic's victory…

This documentary, based on the account of various scientists, dives us into the heart of the intensive ChArMEx (Chemistry Aerosol Mediterranean Experiment) research campaign mounted during summer 2013. Researchers are analysing the atmospheric pollution, tracking a huge dust plume sent up from the Sahara Desert and rised above the Mediterranean area towards Europe. The purpose of the project is to study air pollution in Western Mediterranean basin, in order to understand its origins…

Virginie Grandhomme, sociologue à l'université de Nantes, a mené une enquête, durant trois ans à Nantes et dans les environs, sur la pratique du graffiti. Elle a vécu le quotidien des graffeurs, les suivant dans leurs déplacements y compris lors d'opérations illicites, pour comprendre la complexité et l'originalité de leur démarche, découvrant une communauté structurée et dense. Elle a commencé par dénombrer et construire un échantillon des représentations peintes dans la rue,…

Throughout the north-western Mediterranean coastland, at the end of the Middle Ages, princes, prelates, nobility and great merchants ordered large decorations for their residences, the painted ceilings of which were a key element. Particular attention was paid to the trims, planks slid between the joists to hide the unaesthetic empty space between them. Monique Bourin and Pierre-Olivier Dittmar, historians as well as heritage curators, archaeologists and restorers, show us the meaning and…

To the East of Cameroon, grouped on the roadside near a dispensary, surrounded by deforestation and the creation of cobalt mines, Baka Pygmies try to cope with the shock of modernity about which nothing has prepared them. Working with them in the village of Moangue - Le Bosquet since many years, anthropologists and filmaker deviate from their research fields and take step back to make the observation of this mutation.

Suzy Platiel, an ethnolinguist and an Africanist, explains what led her to work on the tale. She tries to understand the function of the tales in oral societies, especially in Sanan of Burkina Faso. She intervened, in the 1980s in schools in France, in order to distribute this educational tool. She explains that the mastery of oral and body language is essential in the development of the child, before requiring they may read or write. Jean-Christophe Gary, a French teacher, and others, who…

Marie Charpentier, an evolutionary biologist at the CEFE (Centre d ' Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Montpellier, France) and coordinator of the Mandrillus project (created in early 2012, until April 2013 at Lékédi Park in the province of Upper Ogowe Gabon). There, She has followed, during a year and an half, a population of mandrills in the wild in order to understand the social structure of a group and its impact on the health of its individuals. Her research focuses on the influence…

The Italian filmmaker Mario RUSPOLI shot "Les inconnus de la terre", or the unknown of the earth, produced by Argos film, in Lozere in 1961, . This film about the farmers of this French department, and beyond, about the disinherited, about the isolated man, as Ruspoli himself has it, is a landmark in the history of documentary film. 50 years later, Jean-Christophe Monferran, director, Françoise-Eugénie Petit and Martin de la Soudière, as researchers who are familiar with these fields of…

In early 1939 thousands of Republican refugees crossed the Pyrenees into France, fleeing the Spanish Civil War, an event known as the Retirada. Seventy years on, the memories of this painful episode, handed down from their forebears, live on in their children and grandchildren, albeit blurred and altered. This film looks at how the exodus of the Spanish Republicans in1939 is remembered by their descendants in southwest France today, focusing on the various ways in which these memories have…

The Berre pond is one of the largest brackish water ponds in Europe. Located at the outskirts of Marseille, it is today one of the most studied lagoons around the Mediterranean. Researchers in different disciplines (historian, ecologists, industry, politicians) elaborate on theindustrial history of this place and demonstrate how it has become a threatened and threatening place. They try to find solutions to rehabilitate this lake and its ecosystem into a living place for those staying on its…

Portrait of Nicole Le Douarin, a major figure of the modern science, whose research domain is embryology and development. She has contributed in the greatest way to a better comprehension of the neural crest formation.

Alan Turing was a mathematician, cryptographer, pioneer of the informatics, of the artificial intelligence and of the morphogenesis in biology. At the occasion of the century of his birth, this film presents this exceptional man, recounting his life, his work and his influence.

A Human-Environment Observatory has been created by the CNRS in order to understand the impact of the building of a bridge on the Oyapock River. Its aim is to study the district of this river, from an environmental and economic point of view, and to evaluate the changes that the bridge will cause to men and nature.

This film draws a very peculiar and poetic portrait of twenty researchers through science pictures from the CNRS images database.

South Africa has one of the richest rock art heritages in the world. Thousands of paintings and engravings are a testament to the artistic talent of the San people. To further the understanding of these paintings, a team of French and South African scientists carried out the first campaign in this country to analyse rock paintings in situ using a Raman spectrometer. This technique makes it possible to identify the pigments used in the paintings without damaging them. It is an…

A genetic, medico-legal and psychosocial approach to the genetic anomaly of men with a 47th chromosome (XYY trisomy), casting doubt on the media's assimilation of this anomaly to anti-social and criminal tendencies.

A presentation of excavation, conservation and restoration work by the Franco-Egyptian Centre that is studying the temples at Karnak, the famous archaeological site on the banks of the Nile.

Daily life in a village of North East France at the time of the local elections in March 1971: the clash of interest causes tension among the villagers throughout the period.

Traditional houses and new architecture in Ayorou, an island on the River Niger in the archipelago of Tillaberi. The village and its activities; the building of the house of a newly-wed young man.

The missionary father 0'Reilly was in the Solomon Islands, South Pacific, in 1934-1935. He filmed the daily life, customs and traditions of the people of Bougainville.

The Saint-Chamond company presents to the High Commission of Inventions its 220 mm gun on its continuous track chassis towed by a caterpillar tractor. This lead vehicle produces the electric current necessary to propel the gun chassis with a built-in power generator. Vehicles are tested on rough terrain to resemble battlefield conditions, and then several shots are fired.

The High Commission of the Directorate of Inventions is considering the different ways of transporting shells in difficult terrain and under various weather conditions. This ranges from manual transport to animal traction (dogs, horses), as well as the use of several types of manual traction devices such as the Porteur Lachat. A tracked transport vehicle is also tested in the field.

In 1917, as part of military motion picture instruction, soldiers are trained to the Vickers machine gun. The use of this short-recoil weapon is explained in six detailed points: its handling; its disassembly and reassembly; its operation; possible shooting incidents; its maintenance; practical information on special aircraft systems.

En 1917, dans le cadre de l'instruction militaire par l'image, la mitrailleuse Vickers est enseignée aux soldats. L'utilisation de cette arme à court recul est expliquée en six points détaillés : son maniement ; son démontage et son remontage ; son fonctionnement ; les éventuels incidents de tirs ; son entretien ; les renseignements pratiques sur les dispositifs spéciaux pour son utilisation en avion. (Résumé repris du catalogue du CNC Patrimoine)