Working Class

Loosely based on Charles Dicken’s book “A Tale of Two Cities”, Working Class tells the tale of underground street artists Mike Giant and Mike Maxwell and their decade long friendship that started with a tattoo. The story is told through the cities they call home by, cutting back and forth between the neighborhoods of San Francisco and San Diego, as the artists talk about their life philosophies and the work they create.

2011-09-08 | en

Signatures of the Soul

Tattooing — "the world's oldest skin game" — is the subject of this iconic documentary. Writer/director Geoff Steven scored a major coup by signing Easy Rider legend Peter Fonda as his presenter. Travelling to Aotearoa, Samoa, Japan and the United States, the doco traces key developments in tattooing, including its importance in the Pacific, prison-inspired styles, and the influence of 1960s counterculture. Legendary tattooists feature (including Americans Ed Hardy and Jack Rudy), while the closing credits parade some eye-opening full body tattoos.

1984-10-04 | en

Stoney Knows How

A visit with a master of the Oldest Art In The World: tattooing. Disabled by arthritis since the age of four, confined to a wheelchair, his growth stunted, Stoney St. Clair joined the circus at 15 as a sword swallower. A year later he took up tattooing, and traveled with circuses and carnivals for fifty years practicing his craft. As we watch him at work, we see the determination which led Stoney to use his crippled hands in an art where mistakes are permanent, and we realize Stoney has overcome his handicap to heal himself and others with the magic of symbols. The film ends with a visit by New Age tattoo master Don Ed Hardy, who receives a permanent souvenir by Old School tattoo master Stoney.

1981-11-11 | en

The Tattooist

Rooster Teeth’s Geoff Ramsey explores the subculture of tattoos and takes a crash course from a master tattoo artist.

2017-03-24 | en

The Crazy Life

Reflects a depressing and hopeless reality by following some of the members of "la dieciocho", the so-called 18th Street gang in a poor San Salvador neighborhood.

2008-09-20 | es

Tattoo

A documentary film based on the art of tattooing, tattoo artists and their clients, with interviews exploring the fascination for, and the reasons behind, choosing to be tattooed. The film builds up to long climactic scene, often since replicated in other films on the subject, featuring tattooed bodies displayed as art objects.

1975-01-01 | en

Oceano

The odyssey of a Tuamutu fisherman who sets out from his atoll-only coral island to procure fertile land in the "distant" archipelagos. Lost in the vast South Pacific, he finds the atoll from which he had departed now doomed from atomic experiments.

1971-11-16 | it

Vive La France

Kua and Teriki will soon get married. They live on the distant Tureia island in the French Polynesia, Pacific Ocean and have just been told that something is wrong with their son Maokis heart. It is a consequence of living only 100 km away from the island of Moruroa, where France has tested 193 atom bombs for 30 years. Several of their family members are sick and Moruroa can soon collapse, which can lead to a tsunami likely to drown all of them. Vive La France is a personal and intimate story about harvesting the consequences of the French atomic program.

2014-08-31 | en

Tatoué percé...Ceci est mon corps

2009-06-01 | fr

Nauru, an Island Adrift

A quiet island, lost in the pacific ocean. Nothing worth of interest, until the day a stroke of luck, phosphate, provided by the island's coral core, led the country to incredible heights: in 1975, it became the second richest country per inhabitant in the world after Saudi Arabia... Only to plunge into ruins a few years later.

2009-03-14 | fr

Kon-Tiki

"Kon-Tiki" was the name of a wooden raft used by six Scandinavian scientists, led by Thor Heyerdahl, to make a 101-day journey from South America to the Polynesian Islands. The purpose of the expedition was to prove Heyerdal's theory that the Polynesian Islands were populated from the east- specifically Peru- rather than from the west (Asia) as had been the theory for hundreds of years. Heyerdahl made a study of the winds and tides in the Pacific, and by simulating conditions as closely as possible to those he theorized the Peruvians encountered, set out on the voyage.

1950-01-13 | no

Tattoo Girls

Tattoo girls is a memoir of life as it is and of women as they are. A window to the lives of seven women from the same city where nothing is exactly as it seems and reality is often hidden behind illusions. It's a female centric-film showcasing about a group of ordinary women (within a range of ages), and their different styles of daily life, showcasing their stories and the impact they have on society as real, everyday women. We are living in a era of the importance and empowerment of women throughout the world, and this documentary aims to convey ideas and topics to be felt, absorbed and discussed.

2018-04-01 | pl

Color-Blind

A synaesthetic portrait made between French Polynesia and Brittany, Color-blind follows the restless ghost of Gauguin in excavating the colonial legacy of a post-postcolonial present.

2019-08-14 | fr

Fratello mare

The Work completes the "quadrilogy" of South Seas seen over a twenty-year period. This film, tells the choral story of an island that in the short time of a generation loses its identity.

1975-10-30 | it

Wayfinders: A Pacific Odyssey

This award-winning PBS documentary sweeps viewers into a seafaring adventure with a community of Polynesians, as they build traditional sailing canoes, learn how to follow the stars across the open ocean, and embark upon a 2,000-mile voyage in the wake of their ancestors.

1999-05-06 | en

Bora Bora, le laboratoire du futur

Bora Bora is the most popular destination in French Polynesia, certainly because of its lagoon, considered the most beautiful lagoon in the world. In this context, the islet could have sunk under concrete and pollution, and the reef could have been irreparably impacted. However, thanks to the will of a handful of inhabitants including the mayor of the island, Bora Bora is today a model of sustainable development, with water treatment technologies that are 15 years ahead of France, programs to rebuild corals and protect wildlife, educational actions and the rehabilitation of Polynesian traditions such as “rahui” and the establishment of a monitoring network using new technologies. All of this makes the island a veritable open-air laboratory that shows the way for all tropical coastal environments around the world.

2022-04-18 | fr

Ma'ohi Nui: In the Heart of the Ocean My Country Lies

For thirty years in the late-twentieth century, the people of Tahiti survived dozens of offshore nuclear tests by the French government. Since the country was colonized in 1880, the blasts left Tahitians picking through the remnants of their islands and culture in an effort to keep indigenous knowledges alive. The film offers a poetic glimpse into contemporary Tahiti, and the colonial struggles its people still face as they strive to sustain their way of life.

2018-05-05 | fr

Voice of the Islands

A behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Walt Disney Animation Studios' MOANA, as aided by the Oceanic Story Trust.

2017-03-07 | en

700 Sharks (Gombessa 4, Genesis)

Originally, in 2014, Laurent Ballesta had just one precise objective: to unravel the mystery of groupers. To understand the issues involved in their collective reproduction. But although focused on the study of groupers, the real surprise came from the sharks. Never before had the team been confronted with such a density of grey reef sharks. The divers took up the challenge of counting them. Methodically, they repeated the operation many times to arrive at the impressive figure of 700 grey reef sharks. Each year, the team returned to the southern pass of Fakarava in French Polynesia. Until 2019, for the fourth expedition, "Gombessa 4" is the synthesis of precise and unique scientific protocols. The mission demonstrated that shark hunts are not anarchic, but rely in part on social organization within the horde, following in the footsteps of the 700 grey sharks in "700 sharks in the night (Gombessa 4, Genesis)".

2016-01-01 | fr

The Way of the Ink

Horitoshi Sensei is one of the last accomplished masters of irezumi, the art of traditional Japanese tattoo. Pascal is a young French journalist specialized in tattoo who discovered Horitoshi’s designs in a magazine and felt in love with them. Although he does not have much money, Pascal decided to go to Tokyo to have all his back tattooed by Horitoshi. When the film starts, he is at his fourth trip, but his tattoo is far from being finished. Pascal is our guide in this travel to discover irezumi.

2011-08-27 | fr