ARCHIVES 2018 / COLLECTION OF THEATRE FILMS - The Survivors of the Fol Espoir

Hosted by Marie Labory (ARTE Journal)
In the presence of a part of the artistic team of the film.

How to make hope real again ? The answer came from Jules Verne's posthumous novel The Survivors of the “Jonathan”, which depicts a micro-society of migrants built after a shipwreck off Cape Horn. During the summer of 1914, while cinema was still in its infancy and very much silent, a crew shot the adventures of the ship and of its passengers in Le Fol Espoir, an open-air cafe turned amateur studio, following them from their departure from Cardiff in 1895 to the wreck of the ship off the Tierra del Fuego in the middle of the austral winter.

Ariane Mnouchkine
Ariane Mnouchkine was born on 3 March 1939 in Boulogne-Billancourt. She is a director and head of the troupe of the Théâtre du Soleil, which she founded in 1964 with her friends from ATEP (Association of the Students of Paris for Drama). The Théâtre du Soleil is one of the last troupes still active in Europe. Its adventure, which started over 40 years ago, continues thanks to the fidelity and affection of a large audience, in France and abroad. Ariane Mnouchkine's career has been marked by a constant exploration of the role and place of theatre and of its capacity to represent our time. In parallel to this desire to tackle great human and political questions in a universal way, she has also conducted a research into great story forms, at the crossroads between the arts of the East and the West.