Frédéric Rossif

Director

August 14, 1922 (67 years)

† April 18, 1990

Cetinje, Yugoslavia [now Serbia and Montenegro]

Biography

Frédéric Rossif (February 16, 1922 – April 18, 1990) was a French film and television director who specialized primarily in documentaries, frequently using archive footage. Rossif's common themes included wildlife, 20th-century history and contemporary artists. He frequently collaborated with notable composers Maurice Jarre and Vangelis. Rossif was born in Cetinje, Montenegro, Yugoslavia. His family was killed during the Second World War. He studied in Rome in late 1930s and early 1940s before …

Filmography

N/A

The Apocalypse of the Animals

L'Apocalypse des animaux is a six-part documentary series by Frédéric Rossif, broadcast in France in the early 1970s. It marks the first collaboration between filmmaker Frédéric Rossif and Greek composer-musician Vangelis.

8.0

A Wall in Jerusalem

A brilliant documentary about the growth of Israel into the Jewish homeland. Seventy-three years of struggle for religious freedom is vividly recorded using rare archive film footage and photographs of historic events in the development of 20th century Israel. Beginning with the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, the film covers Theodor Herzl, founder of modern Zionism; the earliest immigration and settlements; the formation of kibbutzim; the Balfour Declaration; the rise of European anti-Semitism; the British occupation of Palestine; Arab confrontations; the United Nations resolution; the "Exodus" incident, and the Six Day War.

10.0

The Animals

Frédéric Rossif selected animal footage from 300,000 m of film, and structured his film in nine parts, from the creation of the world to the rediscovery of paradise on earth.

7.7

To Die in Madrid

Morir en Madrid brings together several papers on the Spanish Civil War and integrates capturing different points of view, intended to represent the continuity of the suffering of the Spanish during the Franco regime. The death of Federico Garcia Lorca, Guernica, the defense of Madrid, the International Brigades, are some of the items comprised in this document.

10.0

October Revolution

French director Frederic Rossif presents this historical documentary that coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Stock footage from both World Wars are included with 30 minutes of new scenes filmed especially for the project. The historical timeline is traced from the time Czar Nicholas II is crowned. The emergence of Lenin, his death in 1924, and the later contributions of Trotsky and Stalin give the viewer a sense of death, betrayal, and ideological devotion to the communist agenda. Rossif effectively uses scenes from the landmark 1929 film The Man With A Movie Camera by celebrated director Dziga Vertov. Rossif researched the film archives from several countries in his meticulous gathering of materials for this timely historical feature.

6.9

Portrait d'Orson Welles

Excerpts and fragments from different interviews with Orson Welles making a statement to journalists in fluent French about his career and his conception of life.

7.3

The Witnesses

This film brings to life a vanished world: that of the Warsaw Ghetto, destroyed by the Nazis after the 1944 uprising. Two authentic "reconstruction" sources have been used to this end: photographic and cinematographic documents recorded at the time and discovered in Poland, East Germany, Israel and France; and the oral testimonies of 44 survivors, invited to evoke their personal tragedy in front of the images put before their eyes.

5.0

Matisse

Between 1950 and 1955, Henri Langlois tried to produce, on behalf of the Cinémathèque française, several films devoted to great artists, with their cooperation, by entrusting them with virgin film stock. Wrote Langlois on the unfinished project, epic in scope: "We had the idea of asking poets, painters, scholars, writers and even repressed filmmakers [...] to make films in 16mm, with the means at hand, without taking into account any commercial concern or censorship." What precious little came of the project was eight minutes of film from Matisse and twenty-some from Marc Chagall, released at a later date.

7.3

La Villa Santo-Sospir

Cocteau takes the viewer on a tour of a friend's villa on the French coast (a major location used in Testament of Orpheus). The house itself is heavily decorated, mostly by Cocteau (and a bit by Picasso), and we are given an extensive tour of the artwork. Cocteau also shows us several dozen paintings as well. Most cover mythological themes, of course. He also proudly shows paintings by Edouard Dermithe and Jean Marais and plays around his own home in Villefranche.

10.0

As Far as Love Can Go

The boyfriend of Isabelle has just committed suicide. Therefore Isabelle roams the streets of Paris until she decides to change her life radically and leave the city. She travels to the coast where she meets a young history professor on the beach...

N/A

De Nuremberg à Nuremberg

No description available

N/A

Why America

A film about America between the world wars that attempts to capture and interpret the vital moving forces in American society that caused the United States to emerge by the end of World War II as a dominant world power.

5.0

Chagall dans son jardin a Saint-Paul-de-Vence

Extract of rushes from the unfinished documentary project written and produced by Henri Langlois on Marc Chagall.

7.5

The Wild Nation

A documentary film inspired by themes of love, death and dreams. A hymn to beauty featuring animals in their native sphere: the world of nature.

8.0

The Apocalypse of the Animals

A documentary about the life of wild animals.

9.0

Georges Mathieu or the Fury of Being

Narrated by François Billetdoux, this documentary about Georges Mathieu features the artist in Paris painting along to a live improvised soundtrack by Vangelis.

6.1

De Nuremberg à Nuremberg

Frédéric Rossif and Philippe Meyer draw the terrible fresco of the Second World War of the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party until his ultimate defeat (1933-1945). While carefully describing the sequence of events, they go back to the genesis of fascism, and the picture they draw from this first half of the twentieth century is both lucid and frightening. A page of history illustrated by a large number of unpublished documents.

9.0

Pablo Picasso Painter

The filmmaker returns to the subject of Picasso, who he had first filmed in a documentary short made in 1950,then using material from studio archives and shooting stock provided by Cinematheque curator Henri Langlois.

7.0

Le cantique des créatures: Georges Braque ou Le temps différent

One of a number of documentary shorts the director, with the assistance of Cinematheque director Henri Langlois, made from the fifties they the eighties on artists in their historic context, using studio archival material.

You've seen it all! · 19 titles displayed