Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Before there was the internet, there was la Bibliothèque nationale de France (the National Library of France) in Paris: an ever-expanding collection of books, manuscripts, maps and other cultural artifacts that has been operating continuously since the 15th century. The documentary Toute la mémoire du monde (All the Memory in the World), made by the influential and celebrated French filmmaker Alain Resnais in 1956, is an astounding tour of the institution before digitisation, when the world’s largest well of information wasn’t at our fingertips, but fastidiously collected and sorted behind library walls. Resnais focuses not only on the imposing scope of the library’s holdings, but also explores the vast enterprise of maintaining it for centuries to come, as well as the facility’s role as a bustling home for curiosity and enquiry. Through moody black-and-white cinematography of the library’s collection, architecture and meticulous processes, the film explores a place that, like human knowledge itself, is ‘destined to be forever a work in progress’. A dramatic score by Maurice Jarre – by turns pulsing, soaring and delicate – acts as a further guide through the labyrinth of the library, and the film itself.
Director: Alain Resnais
Website: The Criterion Collection
video
Art
Grotesque imagery meets religious conservatism in Hieronymus Bosch’s art
51 minutes
video
Architecture
Why a sculptor pivoted from gallery installations to big-box stores design
9 minutes
video
Physics
Spectacular fractal patterns emerge when electricity meets a wooden surface
4 minutes
video
Mathematics
How a verbal paradox shattered the notion of total certainty in mathematics
5 minutes
video
Values and beliefs
How a God-fearing Jewish woman found atheism – and bacon – in her later years
9 minutes
video
War and peace
Before he leaves to go to war, Artem, 18, says goodbye to the man who raised him
12 minutes
video
Art
A mindbending trip that summons the forgotten women of surrealism
17 minutes
video
Metaphysics
To see the Universe more clearly, think in terms of processes, not objects
6 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
How machine learning can help historians decode ancient inscriptions
7 minutes