BESTIARY OF LOVE
Presented by Laurence Braunberger, producer at Les Films du Jeudi
From the night of the seas to the light of the summits, nature is one immense and perpetual scene of love. Not a twitch, not a colour, not a fancy plumage or carapace that does not respond to the primordial need to embrace the other and to exchange with it something to perpetuate the species. Everywhere, always, the animal lives to unite and unites to live again. For it is all there: to give oneself is to want to give life. Later, the heart and mind of man will detach the fruit from the tree by inventing pleasure without offspring and offspring without pleasure. But here, only the concern to give birth remains.
The restorer – LES FILMS DU JEUDI
Les Films du Jeudi (also responsible for Les Films de la Pléiade and Les Films du Panthéon) has a catalogue of films ranging from 1920 to the present day. Most of them were produced by Pierre Braunberger, one of the most important independent producers of the 20th century, a discoverer of outstanding talent, yet largely unknown to the general public. Pierre Braunberger was involved in the beginnings of most of the Nouvelle Vague directors (François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette, François Reichenbach, Jean Rouch and Chris Marker), and before that, Jean Renoir and Jean-Pierre Melville, and more recently Gérard Pirès, Gérard Krawczyk and so many others! The Centre Georges Pompidou paid tribute to him in 1987, and the Cinémathèque Française in May 2001.
Since his passing, Laurence Braunberger, his daughter, has taken over the management of the companies and devotes herself to the preservation and restoration, generally with the support of the CNC, of films from her library, as well as to their marketing. She produces, with as much parsimony as her father did with bulimia, projects that are dear to her heart.
Gerald Calderon, French film director, (1926 -2014), worked for more than forty years in the cinema industry both as a company director and as a documentary film director. He was also a producer and actor. He has been member of the Cannes Film Festival jury in 1987. He was the elder half-brother of Michael Lonsdale. Employed by the Worms bank as a proxy and passionate about insects of all kinds, Gérald Calderon began directing in 1958 with a series of animal short films produced by Pierre Braunberger: Terre d’insectes, which won the Golden Bear for short films at the Berlin Film Festival, Terre d’oiseaux and Terre sous-marine, which were both selected for the Venice Biennale, as well as Le Vivarium in 1959. In 1960, he switched to the world of the cinema industry by taking over the management of the Studios de Billancourt, while continuing his career as filmmaker. In 1961, his first feature film, Le Grand secret, a documentary on the search for the origins of man with the voice of Pierre Fresnay, won the Lion of Saint Mark at the Venice Festival. He then directed Le Bestiaire d’amour, adapted from the work of biologist Jean Rostand, which tells the story of the sex life of animals with humour and fantasy. The two films met with a certain success with the critics, who praised the intelligence of the subject and the originality of the form. Gerald Calderon has just rejuvenated the genre of the animal documentary. He continued with Le risque de vivre in 1978, which won the Prix de la Commission Supérieure Technique (CST) at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar in 1981.
Les Films du Jeudi
l.braunberger@filmsdujeudi.com
Restoration completed
Available
