A being with a cube-shaped skull, like an astronaut’s helmet sprouting long antennas linked together with filaments, and without feet, nor legs. This picture does not come from some visionary artist’s canvas but it is drawn in the Utah desert.
Here, as in many other incredible natural spots, awesome drawings have been carved on the rocks thousands of years ago. And for the first time on television, two big authorities on the subject are to take us on a journey around the world, to unravel the mystery around those signs.
American paleontologist, Paul Bahn, and Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, Research Director at France’s CNRS, will retrace the history of these signs as well as search for their meaning, combining shrewd observations with humor. In the first three coming episodes of the series, they will deal with the beautiful signs found in Nine Mile Canyon (USA), the Pedra Furada in Brazil, and the fabulous cliff of Huashan, in China.

Thanks to cutting-edge CGI, the drawings will be exported and animated in order to illustrate clearly for the viewer the possible interpretations. Through hypothesis and experimentation, the viewer will feel closer to the mindset and world of our remote ancestors.

Documentary – 2014 – 60 mn – 16/9

a film by Jean-Luc Bouvret

Des milliers de gravures préhistoriques à l’air libre, menacées par la construction d’un barrage hydraulique. Un terrible dilemme pour les autorités portugaises,tiraillées entre impératifs économiques et culturels.

Documentary – 2012 – 52 mn – 16/9 – Arte

a film by Jean-Luc Bouvret

En 2009, la ville de Châteaugiron doit célébrer son millénaire. Ce n’est peut-être plus un millénaire qu’il va s’agir de fêter, mais plusieurs, si la fouille archéologique engagée vient confirmer le résultat des sondages ! Le film se propose d’accompagner le travail des scientifiques sur les fouilles engagées, mais aussi d’articuler des points de   vue d’enfants, d’artistes contemporains ou des habitants curieux de la vie des hommes qui les ont précédés.

Documentary – 2010 – 52 mn – 16/9

The plants that surround us, as sublime as they might be, compose a familiar decor that we rarely look at and know badly. “Plant Secrets” invites us to discover four ordinary plants, and their unsuspected qualities : the nettle, the thalecress, the yew and the lotus.

Scientists, farmers, economists, sociologists tell us how these plants change our vision of life. They reveal us their applications and their impact on technology, medicine, economics, society. Whether they work as a genetitian, a gardener at the Palace of Versailles, an Indian industrialist or an Australian botanist, we follow them in their labs, expeditions at the other end of the world, or simply in their gardens.

Documentary – 2006 – 52 mn – 16/9 – France 5,

For centuries, an archeological treasure has lane, spread up along the banks of the peaceful Portuguese river Côa: thousands of engravings in the open air dating to 25.000 BC. This huge discovery could be a revolution in the way we imagine the daily life and the purpose of art for our prehistorical ancestors. Rock art in caves might have been an exception. Thanks to a lowering of the river, the researchers’ team will, for the first time, be able to explore one of the most precious settings of European cultural heritage.

Documentary – 2006 – 26 mn – 16/9

Thirty years after their first launch on the market, the little items enclosed inside Kinder chocolate eggs are exhibited in art galleries. Their growing popularity in artistic circles is widely acknowledged by experts in contemporary art. From simple popular objects, Kinder Surprise eggs are becoming works of art, and this transformation is at the core of recent problematics in the aesthetics’avant-garde. The movie accounts for this transformation, with all the seriousness we would expect on the topic.

a film by Gérard Nougarol & Martine Journet

Feature-length documentary – 2005 – 87 mn – 16/9 – France Ô

Among the Wana people, semi-nomades from the Indonesian forest, Indo Pino is a highly recognized shaman.

But for some months now, her nephew, recently converted to Christian Pentecotism, has settled some hundred meters from her hut.

The film shows how the introduction of judeo-christian concepts, such as the original sin, satanizes the ancestral shamanic pratics, highlighting the first Christian missionaries’ strategy of evangelization.