Une ballade à travers les ruines de Paris
Christophe Clavert
2004 - 135 min - DV Cam - Couleur et Noir & Blanc - France

In the middle of the 19th century, Baron Haussmann, under the authority of Napoleon III, set up a plan to rationalise the city of Paris. One hundred and fifty years later, at a time when the centre of Paris is no longer anything but boutiques, where very few inhabitants are left, the evolution of the city is just following the road drawn by Haussmann at the beginning of the peak of the industrial era.
By bringing together the description of the Paris of today and the memories of events which happened in these places, by mixing the visual aids (photographs, pictures, old films...), "Les Ruines de Paris" traces two centuries of urban history through the testimonies of people who lived in the city, who observed or took part in its changes (Haussmann, Nadar, Balzac, Lissagaray, Debord...).