User’s Instructions

Why « Around May 1st »

Because each year around the 1st of May, the association « Autour du 1er mai » organises with the association « Peuple et Culture » and the « Palace » cinema a week long festival of cinema in Tulle, Corrèze, France.

Because, like for millions of other people around the world, May 1st is a day we hold dear.

In 2006, the theme of the week was « Representations of the Popular Front in Film ».

In 2007 the event took place from April 27 to May 5. The theme of this second edition was « Film and the Rural World », a reflection on the way cinema had accompanied the vast transformations of the French rural and agricultural scene.

In 2008, the third edition of the festival cinema and society took place from April 24 to May 4, on the theme :« The years around 68 ».

In 2009, the edition of the festival deals with « cinema and utopia ».

In 2010, the festival theme was about « feminism ».

The catalogues of these first three editions are still available on request. The films that were screened, their current distributors are accessible on the data base.

Why create a film data base on the movements of society?

The idea behind the base is to build a tool allowing anyone interested, unions, film-makers, institutions, libraries, festival programmers, to locate the films they are looking for, know how they can screen them, where they can programme them, find out who holds rights on them.

Hence, in the base, you can find fiction as well as documentary, films produced by the industry as well as in non-traditional ways by amateurs, work councils, collectives, unions or associations…

How to use this data base?

Like the letters of the alphabet, there are 26 « paths of access » to find the film which interests you, then by following the path to learn how to use it the way you wish and as the legislation allows.

You will also find in the base, the « coop », i.e. a selection of distributors, publishers, institutions holding copies, which will refer you back to the films we have chosen and facilitate the possibility of organising screenings or programmes.

Finally the « forest of friends » proposes totally subjective selections of films, assumed as such, made by individuals who have been moving for a long time with our way of loving film.

Know the law which governs film distribution, whether it be for an individual or an association, for a commercial or non-commercial projection.

The « Legislation » part will help you become acquainted with the legal framework governing access to films for their distribution.

Why is this base not for the moment a documentary base?

The information on films, the history of the conditions in which they were produced and distributed is of the utmost importance. Each institution, producer, distributor and festival has its own catalogue, but there does not exist what librarians might call a « collective catalogue » allowing us, from across a variety of sources, to find the film we are seeking.

For the moment you will not find films on line on this base. We are observing these new practices with interest, but for the moment have decided not to attempt to integrate them into the project. The base refers you to sites which allow you to access referenced films.