Snapshots of History

Spring 1969, it has been 4 years since the Americans started to fight in Vietnam. In the United States, anti-war organizations are growing and on the battlefield, the war effort is crumbling. Using pictures of a 20-year-old American soldier, Dan Love, the film relates this critical year. During his tour, a mechanic, working on the Phu Loi base near Saigon, is immersed into a difficult time of war.

Between Stalin's death and the coming to power of Nikita Khrushchev in 1953, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States warmed up. In July 1959, an exhibition presenting The American Way of Life to the Soviet people opened in Moscow. We'll discover this unprecedented coming together of the East and the West through the eyes of one of the exhibition's American guides, Dan Slobin.

Andrée and Victor Kuentzmann had just gotten married when the allied troops landed in Normandy on August 1st, 1944. The young lovers lived in the occupied zone, in Audincourt, east of France. They waited like millions of French to be delivered. But the allied troops took months to come. The time for Victor, who had joined the resistance, to be arrested by the Gestapo, left Andrée without news.

August 1944, Paris celebrates its Liberation after four years of occupation. But for more than 600,000 French Compulsory Service workers, the war isn't over. In the factories of the Reich, they have been rounded up by the Nazi regime. This period will be explored through the eyes of a young French STO worker, Jean Baudet. The war brought together Jean and Natascha, but peace will separate them.

After its defeat in 1940, France was split. In the north were the Germans and in the south, a free zone overseen by Marshal Pétain's government. To replace compulsory military service, Pétain founded the Chantiers de la Jeunesse (youth camps). The camps only existed in the free zone, but volunteers from the occupied zone could apply. Follow the photos of Jean Sarda, a volunteer, in July 1942.

In the early 20th century, China was a waning empire in the sway of the European nations. France, already in Indochina, was trying to expand its influence. In 1905, Victor Bermon, a French naval officer, was sent to China to assure the presence of France on the Yangtze river. He took photos of his mission and daily life in China. These images are a record of the Empire just before its collapse.

On 2 August 1914, France decreed the mobilisation of its armed forces. This war that started as a 19th-century conflict would drag Europe into the 20th-century brutality. The first months of that conflict are seen through the eyes of a non-commissioned reserve officer. His name was Louis Danton, and he was thirty years old. Louis took his camera and a doll named 'Toto' his fiancée had given him.

12 February 1934. Robert Talpain, a socialist activist was out on the street. The French Section of the Workers' International was reacting to the extreme-right-wing demonstrations of six days prior. They attempted to overthrow the Republic. Robert Talpain, who was passionate about images, was a driver at a film production company. A pacifist who had been traumatized by the Great War.

On the morning of the 7th December 1941, Japan bombed the American fleet based in Pearl harbour. This surprise attack killed 2,000 Americans and completely changed history. The 120,000 people of Japanese origin living on the West Coast of the USA became suspects. We relive this period with Bill Manbo, an American citizen of Japanese origin caught up in the turmoil of the war in the Pacific.

In September 1968, a young officer who had just graduated from Saint Cyr Military Academy flew to Papeete where he was to be stationed. Thanks to his photos, we are able to revisit this astonishing period in the history of France. François Dullin would spend 2 years in Polynesia, with a frontline view of the incredible French armada and would be present at the detonation of the atom bomb.

As of 1985, the USSR committed to Perestroika. In 1989, there were increasing signs of the pending collapse of the Soviet bloc and the desire for freedom spread to East Germany. Wolfgang Thomas was a railwayman and amateur photographer who lived in East Berlin with his wife and son. His photos show the crucial months that led to the collapse of the Berlin wall.

Andrée Greffrath was 6 years old in 1935, when she left Paris for Senegal with her father and mother. In Dakar, which was the capital of French West Africa at the time, her father became the official chauffeur for the colonial civil servants and governors. Their photo albums give us an intimate vision of the life of a family of colonists in colonial France, which was gradually coming apart.

The wealth of photographs accredited to a certain Mr X provides an astonishing record of Paris in the roaring twenties. This twenty-year-old middle-class man from Normandy discovered 'erotic Paris' guided by a young Russian immigrant with whom he'd shared time in the trenches of Verdun. The myth of roaring twenties Paris, capital of libertinage, and the 'little women of Pigalle' was at its peak.

In the 1930s, Nazi Germany and its Japanese ally were threatening global stability. Japan wanted to capture territories in China. France mainly sought to protect its colonies. Several of its ships were in the Far East. Among them was the Lamotte-Picquet. On board was a young mechanic, Marcel Binet. His photos allow us to illustrate his view of the world when Asia was entering a new era.

Based on the photographs taken by Anouschka, a young Dutch woman, the film takes a look back at the 1970s. In 1975, in the Netherlands, she placed a classified advert and met Antoinette. Together, they purchased a Volkswagen minibus in which they would live and travel for a year. Their photographs and films tell the tale of their expedition to Kathmandu.

Stanislas Antonowicz left 800 photographs of his time in India. In 1930, India was starting to face nationalist demands. His photos provide a glimpse of a period and a vision: that of an expatriate European in the heart of the jewel of the British colonial empire where the winds of independence were already starting to blow.

The 500 photographs left by Vicky Henderson record the rise of a young black woman in 1950s Europe. Vicky was born in 1926 in Alabama. Slavery had been abolished for fifty years, but segregation was still rife in the south. Her photos tell the story of a black girl whose fate would change thanks to a few musical notes. She would become the first black cabaret dancer and singer in Switzerland.

Dr Léon Collin's photos take us into the heart of the penal colonies, prisons to which the French sent 100,000 men between 1854 and 1938. In 1906, this middle-class medical officer was assigned to a boat that made two trips yearly to transport the convicts from the Île de Ré to Guyana. These journeys and a stop in New Caledonia in 1910, opened his eyes to the horrors of the penitentiary system.

In autumn of 1980, Richard, a young drummer, headed to New York to make a name for himself. He met Michael, with whom he shared the same love of the blues. Michael told him that he was seriously ill. Richard decided to stay and fight alongside him. Together they would lead a struggle against the disease and the government, whom they accused of not taking the necessary steps to stop the epidemic.

In 1923, Pilou was 19 years old. He lived in Avallon, a small town in the Yonne and knew that one day he would go to Paris, where he could fully embrace his desire for men. His photo albums provide a rare record of the life of a young homosexual during the roaring twenties. They tell the tale of this magical interlude that would soon be endangered by the rise of extremism throughout Europe.