Jean Epstein was a French filmmaker, film theorist, literary critic, and novelist. Although he is remembered today primarily for his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher", Epstein directed three dozen films and was an influential critic of literature and film from the early 1920s through the late 1940s. He is often associated with French Impressionist Cinema and the concept of photogénie.
Epstein was born in Warsaw, Kingdom of Poland (then a part of Russian Empire) to a French-Jewish father and Polish mother. After his father died in 1908, the family relocated to Switzerland, where Epstein remained until beginning medical school at the University of Lyon in France. While in Lyon, Epstein served as a secretary and translator for Auguste Lumière, considered one of the founders of cinema.
Epstein started directing his own films in 1922 with Pasteur, followed by L'Auberge rouge and Coeur fidèle (both 1923). Film director Luis Buñuel worked as an assistant director to Epstein on Mauprat (1926) and La Chute de la maison Usher (1928). Epstein's criticism appeared in the early modernist journal L'Esprit Nouveau.
In spite of bad omen about the upcoming storm, the fisherman sets out to the sea and doesn't return. The wife of the fisherman embarks on a journey to find the storm whisperer who could calm down the sea and return the fisherman home. ...
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A poetic drama, spoken in the Breton language and set in a Breton fishing community, telling of the impossible love between a waifish fisherman and a highborn lady-of-the-manor. ...
Watch NowDocumentary film shot in Brittany about lighthouses and lighthouse keepers on the island of Ouessant and coast of Finistere. ...
Watch NowIn a foundry, in 1951, a modernization program was implemented in order to revive competitiveness. ...
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Following a premonition, a young woman tries to persuade her fiancé not to go out to sea in his fishing boat, but the boy ignores her and sets out. Soon, a storm occurs, and the girl frantically tries to find out his fate. Eventually, at the advice of her ...
Watch NowDocumentary on communication routes for the French section of the New York International Exposition of 1939 ...
Watch NowThe inhabitants of a poor village want to sell their houses and their land. One day, a woman breaks down in her car while crossing the village. ...
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A sailor falls in love with an innkeeper on a lost island. ...
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Produced for the National Federation of Building Workers Ciné-Liberté, a Popular Front organization intended to counteract capitalist interests in the film industry, Epstein's union documentary examines building policy from the perspective of ordinary wo ...
Watch NowA short subject, described by its director as a film poem, commissioned by the French Youth Hostel Association. ...
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Documentary film about the people of Brittany and their lives, including music and dance from the region. ...
Watch NowAn idyllic description of that french area, including quarries, vineyards and the most typical issues from Bourgogne's region. ...
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When an innocent young woman finds herself abandoned by the proper young man whose child she's had, she is taken in by a troupe of traveling performers. ...
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Parisian adventures of a fearless couple of friends and their return to their home in Marseille after a happy double marriage. ...
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The French and the English spy on each other, in this adventure set in post World War I colonial Syria. ...
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Because he found a box washed up by the sea holding unknown contents, a poor and despised fisherman and his daughter are suddenly courted by everyone in the village. ...
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The almost financially ruined French gentleman Gaston Dewalter spends several days in Biarritz before going off in the Hispano-Suiza, a luxe car which was a present from his friends. George becomes the lover of Lady Stéphane Oswill pretending he is wealth ...
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A woman rocks a cradle; a man comes to land from the sea, but leaves to view it from a distance. ...
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This portrait of the French film theorist and avant-garde director Jean Epstein (1897-1953) concentrates on the period when he filmed in Brittany, the spot where he became inspired by the sea. Using rare archive footage, Jean Epstein, Young Oceans of Cinem ...
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From the French television series Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma, the episode uploaded here, Jean Epstein ou le Cinéma pour lui-même, was produced and (I'm pretty certain) directed by Claude-Jean Philippe. There isn't much info out there-- especi ...
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