14/18: The Centennial of the First World War

 The journalist and politician Jean Jaurès was assassinated in a restaurant in Paris on 31 July 1914. In the weeks prior to his death, he had been battling to keep his country from entering the war, defended in his efforts by like-minded people across Europe. Nevertheless, a few days later, the First World War broke out, spreading its destruction and slaughter across the continent. Cinema was barely twenty years old at the time and became a key witness to the conflict, which quickly became the inspiration for a number of works. Whether directly tackling the war in the form of newsreels and propaganda films, or using it as a backdrop for fictional works and educational films, the cinema generated a considerable quantity of documents on the subject.

 Guillaume le désespéré by Bérenger Thouin (France – 2012)

For three years now the French Film Archives (AFF) has been engaged in the massive undertaking of inventorying, restoring and digitizing those films. To that end, the AFF have teamed up with twenty-five European partners under the aegis of the European Film Gateway and the project “EFG1914”, whose aim is to provide access to a large number of cinematic resources. For the hundredth anniversary of the Great War, the AFF have made several newly restored short films available to us. These will be presented in two different programs alongside recent films dealing with this war, which was not “The war to end all wars”.