Our films – Productions Campagne Première

Happiness at school (2020)

A film by Martin Meissonnier

Happiness at school or « How to reinvent school » is a 90’ documentary film directed by Martin Meissonnier. (Broadcast: October 27 on Canal + docs ) and a 3X52’ series (Broadcast: January 2022 on Canal + Kids)

Teachers around the world reinvent education and prepare children to become engaged citizens, ready to apprehend the challenges of our hyper-connected world. How can XXI century school re-invent itself?

Happiness at School is an interactive web platform intended to encourage international exchange and multi-cultural thinking. It will allow teachers, parents, and schoolchildren from around the world to share new ways of teaching, helping to find solutions at home, at school, and beyond.

Join us at www.happinessatschool.org

What woman want at work (2018)

A film by Martin Meissonnier

A documentary to deconstruct stereotypes, confront discrimination and explore the globe in search of a new male/female equilibrium in the workplace. Because Happiness at works is synonymous to equal rights for the sexes.

Happiness at work (2015)

A film by Martin Meissonnier

We’re all searching for happiness. We spend most of our lives working, why not talk about “happiness at work” ?
This film will allow you to discover inovating ideas to improve the everyday worklife. A few companies worldwide are trying to reinvent their structure. And surprise : they are economically extremely successfull !

The genie in the light bulb (2012)

A film by Martin Meissonnier & Pascal Signolet

Today, one billion six hundred thousand human beings have no access to electricity.
This film tells the story of the arrival of electricity in Hathine, a tiny isolated village in the forbidden mountains of northern Laos – one of the last communist countries in the world – on the borders of China and Vietnam. Electricity brings progress, unquestionably. But does that progress bring happiness ?

Dancing City - Johannesburg (2012)

A film by Martin Meissonnier

“Dancing City” takes us around the world to explore street dance and music with Maïa Barouh, a sparky young Japanese-French singer and dancer with a great sense of humor and a winning smile.
Since the end of apartheid, there has been an explosion of creativity in South Africa, and Johannesburg is today the capital of “Deep House”. Naturally, the new mixed styles of music have given birth to dancing styles as inventive and hybrid as Pantsula, which integrates tribal movements with hip hop steps.
Maïa has an amazing ability to connect with all kinds of people and adapt to very different situations. Everywhere she meets people, they tell her about their dances that all have a meaning. They sublimate strongly the country’s history of social conflict and struggle, and its roots in various tribes.

Washington-Paris, la diplomatie des banlieues (2012)

A film by Martin Meissonnier, written by Mohammed Nemmiche & Olivier Domerc

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, it brought young politicians of immigrant extraction across Europe a powerful hope for their future. This film tells the stories of the young generation of elected minority leaders in France. Their political opinions are varied and their outlook and experience contradicts the cliché bad rep of France’s suburbs.
But there is a problem : The ethnic diversity of the population is barely represented in Parliament. These young elected officials will encounter people like them who have succeeded in breaking through. In the United States, they meet the legendary political strategists who brought Obama to the White House. Will these young men and women from contrasting backgrounds make it into the tight little world of political insiders?

Rose, c'est Paris (2010)

A film by Bettina Rheims & Serge Bramly

Photographer Bettina Rheims and author Serge Bramly have published many art books together.
For their new project “Rose, c’est Paris”, Serge Bramly has decided to shoot the photo sessions and create a fiction film.

Waste Your Life (2010)

A film by Martin Meissonnier & Pascal Signolet

The tremendous accumulation of waste on our planet poses an increasingly terrifying problem.
In this film, experts speaking from all over the world and even outer space propose alternative solutions which might prevent our planet from becoming a giant dump.

Afrobeat Rules (2009)

A film by Lucie Yeung, Christophe Petit & Martin Meissonnier

More and more artists say they were inspired by Fela Kuti, but how many really know the story of Afrobeat ?
This film takes you on tour in Africa with the group that created this sound, Egypt 80, and its leader, Fela Kuti’s son, Seun, whose performances are already legendary.

Henri Leclerc, au nom de l'Homme (2008)

A film by Rémi Lainé

Lawyer for the most destitute and lost causes, defender of Algerian independentists, Guadeloupean or Breton autonomists, Moroccan opponents or minors, Henri Leclerc has been using the law as a weapon for more than fifty years.
Recognised by his peers as a hard worker and fine tactician, he has made a major contribution to the modernisation of the French justice system. At the age of 74, the honorary president of the League for Human Rights still retains his capacity for indignation.
Meeting with a rebel.

Seun Kuti - Many things (2008)

A clip by Christophe Petit

Seun Kuti is the youngest son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. From the age of 9, he began opening Fela’s shows with Egypt 80 before his dad took the stage. Fela passed in 1997, and Seun assumed the mantle as head of Egypt 80; he has run it ever since, preserving and extending his father’s political and musical legacy.

The real Joan of Arc (2007)

A film by Martin Meissonnier

“It was no shepherd’s daughter who burned in Rouen, but a child of the race of kings.” (Shakespeare, Henry VI)
If nobody doubts the existence of Joan of Arc, recent historical evidence has shattered the legend.
The cult of Joan of Arc is an extraordinary myth. In the collective memory, she was a little shepherd-girl who died at the stake after saving France. She has been portrayed in turn as a popular revolutionary figure, the restorer of the monarchy and divine order, a victorious warlord in the Hundred Years’ War, and a partisan betrayed by the country’s religious elite. Her legend was fundamental to the rise of French nationalism in the 19th century.
Having been forgotten for over three centuries, Joan of Arc re-emerged after the French Revolution and dominated political and ideological debates about French national unity up until the wartime Vichy regime. Joan was said to have been born in Domrémy in the coal-rich Lorraine region that the Germans intended to annex. She heard the voice of God and became the virgin who freed France and who was accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake by the English.
That is the legend but what is the true story of a girl who was virtually forgotten until the 1870s ? Investigative journalist Marcel Gay has devoted twenty years to this subject. He has hunted down documents in France, Germany, the UK and the Vatican to find evidence that will shock many people today.

On God's right (2004)

A film by Martin Meissonnier, in collaboration with Roger Trilling

Since September 11, 2001, the world has discovered that President George W. Bush belongs to the evangelical Christian movement. He has never hidden this from his fellow Christians, most of whom identify strongly with his words and deeds.
These Christians, whose numbers are impossible to evaluate accurately because the dividing lines between fundamentalists and moralists are so vague, are missionaries by tradition and all equal before God. They use modern communication techniques to bring the Good Book into people’s homes and hearts. Yet, in the last thirty years, Christian Evangelicals have drifted into more reactionary waters. Many become fundamentalists. Be they Baptists, Adventists, Pentecostalists, conservative and proud of it, low-key or fanatic, who are they and what do they want ? On the eve of the US presidential election, this film goes in search of these missionary electors from the world’s most powerful country.

The life of Buddha (2003)

A film by Martin Meissonnier

Over 2,500 years ago, Buddha Sakyamuni reached the Great Nirvana. Nowadays, half the planet is influenced by the philosophy of the first and the greatest of all revolutionaries. But who was the man who came to be known simply as Buddha ?
Siddharta, son of King Suddhodan, was born some time between 566 and 430 BC in the Himalayan foothills. His family belonged to the Sakya tribe. In the valley of Kathmandu in Nepal, a Buddhist tribe of the same name still survives today. For thousands of years, their story-tellers have told the legend of Siddharta…
By comparing their oral history, recent archeological evidence and historical sources, the documentary retraces Buddha Sakyamuni’s life and tries to get a better appreciation of a philosophy that has often been hijacked to other ends.
With the participation of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and Dr. Robin Coningham, a lecturer at the archeology department of the University of Bradford.