Gérard de Battista

Camera operator

September 20, 1946 (79 years)

Paris, France

Biography

No biography available.

Filmography

6.1

French Twist

After learning of her husband's infidelities, a housewife invites an itinerant lesbian to move in with them. None of their lives will ever be the same again.

6.6

The Year 01

The film narrates a utopian abandonment, consensual and festive of the market economy and high productivity. The population decides on a number of resolutions beginning with "We stop everything" and the second "After a total downtime will be revived-reluctantly-that the services and products including lack will prove intolerable. Probably: water to drink, electricity for reading at night, the TSF to say "This is not the end of the world, this is an 01, and now a page of Celestial Mechanics". The implementation of these resolutions is the first day of a new era, Year 01. The Year 01 is emblematic of the challenge of the 1970s and covers such diverse topics as ecology, negation of authority, free love, communal living, rejection of private property and labor.

1.0

Elles et moi

January 1939. The fall of Barcelona seals the defeat of the Spanish Republicans. Five hundred thousand of them choose exile. Upon arriving in France, the men are disarmed and interned in camps. As for the families, the administration distributes them among makeshift centers, several of which are in Ardèche. Elles et moi chooses to follow the fate of the Esteva family during these terrible months and the five years of war that follow. Lluis, the father, lives in hope of reconquest. Pilar, his courageous and energetic wife, feels that this new country will become her home for a long time to come. She thus leads her two children, Isabel and Ignacio, into this new life...

6.5

A Secret

In 1953, a sensitive French boy finds out from a neighbor that his family's Jewish. François Grimbert becomes a physician, and gradually peels the layers of his buried family history which resulted in his difficult upbringing, raised as Catholic by his "Aryan" appearing parents. His athletic father labored to stamp out stereotypical Jewish characteristics he perceived in his son, to keep the family's many secrets, as most relatives fought in World War II, and later were hauled off to labor and death camps by the Gestapo.

6.5

What War May Bring

A theater projectionist's daughter is involved in the Resistance in WWII, but she doesn’t share his political involvement & only believes in passion. She follows the men she loves unconditionally, suffering betrayal and hardship.

5.4

Little Lili

This film, loosely inspired by Anton Chekov's The Seagull, weaves a story about sex, family and the business of making films. When the young and overly sensitive filmmaker Julien screens his new DV art-film starring his girlfriend Lili (Swimming Pool's Ludivine Sagnier) --a sexy young local girl--to his famous actress mother Mado, and her lover Brice, an accomplished film director, an unraveling of the delicate peace in their house begins. The graceful beauty Lili, who dreams of becoming a famous actress like Mado, is immediately fascinated by Brice, who gladly falls prey to her charms.

6.3

One, Two, Three, Sun

A provocative, seemingly absurd patchwork movie which sends a worthwhile message about hope against all odds, love, children and human understanding. Schoolgirl Victorine has an insane mother and an alcoholic father who can never find his way home in their maze of slum apartment blocks. Aggressive, sexually threatening boys of all ages are everywhere, and while the teacher eventually relents to a gang of adolescent rapists, Victorine gives herself to a rowdy gang of older layabouts, eventually winning the heart of burglar Paul.

5.9

Venus Beauty Institute

Aging beautician Angèle, already wounded by a long-ago romance, gets awkwardly dumped at a train station. Witnessing how she turns around a humiliating situation, younger sculptor Antoine becomes so smitten that he breaks up with his fiancée and sets out to win Angèle's heart. Meanwhile, Angèle attempts to quash the budding romance of her young co-worker, Marie, and a much older widowed client, despite their obvious rapport.

4.7

No Big Deal

Three sons are sent on a journey to trace their father's checkered past.

5.6

Hiver 54, l'abbé Pierre

Postwar France was slow to recover from the after-effects of the World War Two. The economy was doing poorly, and many people were poor and homeless, sleeping under bridges, etc. The winter of 1953-54 proved particularly difficult for these people, as it was one of the coldest on record. Father Pierre (Lambert Wilson), a parish priest, on seeing the suffering of these people (and their frequent death from the cold), was moved to write the French government seeking help for them. When his letter, which was published in the newspapers, succeeded in rousing overwhelming popular support for helping the homeless, he was able to form a charitable group (still active today) titled "Les Chiffoniers d'Emmaus," or "The Ragpickers of Emmaus" to channel help to them. This biographical film tells the true story of Abbe Pierre's successful efforts in those years.

5.8

Thérèse

An unhappily married woman struggles to break free from social pressures and her boring suburban setting.

4.0

Vive la crise !

In a futuristic France, computers decide the fate of the unemployed and the homeless.

4.5

Fortune Tellers and Misfortune

Chantel is happy: her son's away at school playing soccer, she and her husband get along, her neighbor Agnès is her best friend, and her job at a government office is easy. When her husband is laid off and she wonders for how long, her office pal Jackie recommends Alban, a psychic (and compulsive gambler), who promptly tells Chantel of a curse on her that will take three sessions (and 10,000 FF) to dispel. Through happenstance, she meets Alban's half-brother; thinking she is following the psychic predictions, she tries to start an affair with him. She also undergoes Alban's exorcism, and soon, terrible things indeed start to happen. Is there any way out of her misery?

5.6

The Courage to Love

A picture of humankind in Paris: singers, shows, social gatherings, businessmen, nightclub barmen, bums, shoppers.

6.4

Une époque formidable

Michel Berthier, a senior executive at a mattress manufacturing company, has just been fired. As he does not dare to tell the truth to Juliette, his partner, he goes into debt to maintain the family’s standard of living, showering them with gifts. But soon he can no longer lie, and he decides to leave the house. After losing his money, his car, and his shoes, he meets Toubib, Mimosa, and Crayon, three “homeless” people who wash themselves in the restrooms at the Gare de l’Est. They take him under their wing and lead him to break into his former company in order to get sleeping bags and beds.

6.7

Ashes and Blood

Exiled from her country since her husband's murder ten years earlier, Judith lives in Marseille with her three children. After having refused to see her family for years, Judith, in spite of her fears and secrets, allows herself to be influenced by her children's wishes and accepts an invitation to their cousin's wedding. They set off to spend a summer in the old country, discovering their roots and their past. But Judith's return revives old hatreds between rival clans. The spiral of violence is inexorably set in motion, blood will tell...

6.6

Crossed Tracks

The successful novelist Judith Ralitzer is interrogated in the police station about the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A serial-killer escapes from a prison in Paris. A missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. In the road, the annoying and stressed hairdresser Hughette is left in a gas station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the poor farm of her family in the country. A mysterious man offers a ride to her and she invites him to assume the identity of Paul during 24 hours to not disappoint her mother. Who might be the unknown man and what is real and what is fiction?

5.4

Casque bleu

Winegrower Patrick Ponsac comes close to ruining his marriage when he has an affair with another woman. By way of atonement, he takes his wife back to the Mediterranean island where, 13 years earlier, they spent their honeymoon. Not such a good move, as it turns out. The peacemaking holiday coincides with the outbreak of a bloody civil war. Having failed to leave the country, Patrick, his wife and their eccentric entourage are taken hostage by merciless guerrillas…

4.2

Against the Wind

Juan flees Madrid and an incestuous relationship with his sister, Ana, working at a mine on the Andalucian coast. When his friendship with Rosario, a local shop girl, becomes romance, Ana shows up wanting to rekindle their affair. He resists at first, but she stays, asserting that Juan is the only man she can ever love. Juan distances himself from Rosario. The mine has problems: high cancer rates in the area caused by poorly stored radioactive waste. A foreign safety engineer, Petersen, tries to connect with Ana, is rebuffed, but lets her stay in his sea-front bungalow. Juan seeks her out to demand she leave, only to argue with Petersen. Death, desire, and longing play out.

4.4

Irren ist männlich

Lawyer Thomas Neumann is extremely successful in his career and happily married to his wife Bettina. Nevertheless, he has a mistress on the side, who one day reveals to him that she wants him to have a child. Thomas agrees, but a sperm test reveals that he is infertile. Now he asks himself the question: who is the real father of his children? His brother Johannes, a priest, helps him to find out the truth. Thomas suspects two former friends with whom he and Bettina used to go on vacation. He invites them to his home so that he can carry out comparative studies in peace, as genetic testing didn't exist back then. One friend has gone mad, the other is blind. The two of them cause Thomas' household a great deal of confusion, especially as he has to entertain an important business partner from overseas at his home.