The Conqueror Of The Useless

Biography of ski instructor, mountain guide, mountaineer and filmmaker-lecturer Lionel Terray. Film-portrait of an emblematic figure of French mountaineering in the 1950s and 1960s, reconstructing the life, the great races and the expeditions of the "conqueror" of the most difficult walls and summits of Europe, the Himalayas, the Andes and North America. Marcel Ichac produced in 1966, the day after the Gerbier accident, this illustrated tribute by bringing together personal archive documents, unpublished animated sequences or extracts from e...

Route des Cimes

With the tank truck of the company British Petroleum (BP), the Bozzetto fuel delivery man crosses mountain roads in winter. Headed to Val d'Isère in Savoie, it faces, night and day, the vagaries of traffic in snowy weather, and penetrates the life of the winter sports resort living to the rhythm of development activities. , sports and tourism: tunnel construction, snow milling machine, cable car, hotel and catering as well as skiing from the peaks to the village (off-piste descent demonstration by Lionel Terray).

Guido Magnone - The Artist

Guido Magnone designs cardboard boxes by hand for his parents' small business. A painter friend loves his brushwork and pushes him to attend the Beaux Arts. He takes an external competition, wins it, befriends the sculptors César and Féraud, surrealists, a handful of bohemians. He then discovered the mountain and quickly became one of the best climbers of his generation. He made prestigious conquests such as the west face of the Drus in the Alps, the first ascents of Fitz Roy in Patagonia with Lionel Terray or Makalu in the Himalayas... Magn...

La Voie Terray

Terray. This name sounds like a challenge and evokes deep respect in the memory of every mountaineer. For all, Lionel Terray remains forever the "Conqueror of the useless", the example of a generous and mature mountaineer, far from any egocentrism and any ambition. Not only a pioneer and witness to the history of mountaineering, Terray is also remembered as a man and a master more than an athlete. Forty years after the tragic death of this extraordinary mountaineer and guide, who liked to think of himself as a "simple mountaineer", his forme...

Guido Magnone - Le Baladeur

Guido Magnone's incredible adventure begins strangely on the banks of the Ourcq canal among a group of kids who dream of swimming. Guido, the solitary son of "rital", dives to get noticed, succeeds, takes a liking to it, breaks his first record, collects medals. At the same time, he draws, attends the Beaux-Arts, is accepted with open arms and befriends the sculptors César and Féraud. At the end of the war, during a health stay in Chamonix, it is love at first sight for the mountains, climbing. Guido's ascent is now dizzying. He stormed the ...

La Grande Cordée

Stars at Noon

Les Etoiles de Midi is an engaging docudrama about some of the more spectacular exploits of French mountain climbers over the last several decades. In one re-enacted story, there is a wartime escape through the mountains, and in another, a daring rescue of a pair of climbers who had been missing. The actors themselves are adept at the sport of climbing, and they give the scenes an immediacy and real daring that brings the stories alive. A combination of their acrobatics and skill and the outstanding episodes in the history of French climbing...

Victory over Annapurna

In 1950, a French expedition led by Maurice Herzog went to central Nepal to conquer the highest peak (8,091 meters): Annapurna. The film is not only made of what we see, but even more of what we don't see. Its imperfections are the negative imprint of the adventure. Memory is the most faithful of films.