Gilles Pedoussaut

Se souvenir des tournesols

To leave or to stay? Anaïs, a 17-year-old deeply connected to her native region of Gers in southwestern France and her friend group, is faced with this dilemma. With her high school diploma in hand, she must leave behind her family and rural life. During this final summer, Anaïs becomes acutely aware of everything she will have to give up: the music, the village festivals, the beauty of the sunflower fields… But how can one build a future in the 'empty diagonal'?"

In the Hearts of the Living

Exclusion is a long journey that continues into death. Over the seasons, volunteers organize the burial of people who have experienced living on the street, trying to bring together their families and loved ones so that they do not leave alone, in oblivion and indifference. Each year, about twenty ceremonies are held in the cemetery of Cornebarrieu on the outskirts of Toulouse. A presence, gestures, songs, and stories accompany these deceased. Through their presence, which might seem vain, at the funerals of strangers, these volunteers question the scope and meaning of such a commitment beyond religious beliefs. By offering a dignified ceremony to the most precarious, they contribute, in a spirit of brotherhood, to honoring their memory. For the true tomb of the dead is the heart of the living.

The Blob: A Genius without a Brain

This documentary outlines the unique properties and latest studies of "Physarum Polycephalum", also known as Blob.

The Blob: A Genius without a Brain

This documentary outlines the unique properties and latest studies of "Physarum Polycephalum", also known as Blob.

The Blob: A Genius without a Brain

This documentary outlines the unique properties and latest studies of "Physarum Polycephalum", also known as Blob.

Animal Doctors

Only twenty-five years ago, the first evidence of self-medicating behaviour among animals was reported among chimpanzees. On the basis of this pioneering research, led by the American Michael Huffman, a new science was founded: "zoopharmacognosy", or the study of animal pharmacopeia. Animals are apparently able to treat themselves actively, to detect natural substances that can provide a remedy for health problems, or to prevent them. The primatologist Michael Huffman explains how he discovered that chimpanzees can heal their diseases with medicinal plants from their environment. The scientist then comments on other very surprising examples: Birds that disinfect their nests by filling them with aromatic plants with repellent properties, a rodent that covers its coat with toxic sap as a poisonous defence against predators and elephants that place mud plasters on their injuries. Some therapeutic behaviours may even be transmitted socially among certain species.

A Natural History of Laughter

For how long have we been laughing? Are human beings the only ones to laugh? In the past, scientists tended to neglect such questions of laughter, leaving them to the philosophers. Jacques Mitsch's A NATURAL HISTORY OF LAUGHTER explores recent scientific attempts to explicate this most elusive of human faculties, undertaken by scientists who see it as a means of approaching some of the larger mysteries of neurology and human behavior.

In the Mind of Plants

Neurobiology has shown in the recent years that contrary to the traditional boundaries between animal and plants, plants can feel, move and even think. Over the recent years, a small but growing group of researchers from Austria, Germany, Italy, UK, Japan, South Africa and the USA, has developed a new scientific field of research: the neurobiology of plants. Their discoveries question the traditional boundaries set between the animal and the vegetable kingdom: plants are capable to develop the cognitive process claimed by humans and animals. If plants can move, and feel... Could they possibly think ? In a creative and captivating scientific investigation style, through spectacular specialist photography and CGI, and re-creating scientific experiments, this documentary is bound to change your own perception of plants.