Snapshots of History

Spring 1969, it has been 4 years since the Americans started to fight in Vietnam. In the United States, anti-war organizations are growing and on the battlefield, the war effort is crumbling. Using pictures of a 20-year-old American soldier, Dan Love, the film relates this critical year. During his tour, a mechanic, working on the Phu Loi base near Saigon, is immersed into a difficult time of war.

Between Stalin's death and the coming to power of Nikita Khrushchev in 1953, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States warmed up. In July 1959, an exhibition presenting The American Way of Life to the Soviet people opened in Moscow. We'll discover this unprecedented coming together of the East and the West through the eyes of one of the exhibition's American guides, Dan Slobin.

Andrée and Victor Kuentzmann had just gotten married when the allied troops landed in Normandy on August 1st, 1944. The young lovers lived in the occupied zone, in Audincourt, east of France. They waited like millions of French to be delivered. But the allied troops took months to come. The time for Victor, who had joined the resistance, to be arrested by the Gestapo, left Andrée without news.

August 1944, Paris celebrates its Liberation after four years of occupation. But for more than 600,000 French Compulsory Service workers, the war isn't over. In the factories of the Reich, they have been rounded up by the Nazi regime. This period will be explored through the eyes of a young French STO worker, Jean Baudet. The war brought together Jean and Natascha, but peace will separate them.

After its defeat in 1940, France was split. In the north were the Germans and in the south, a free zone overseen by Marshal Pétain's government. To replace compulsory military service, Pétain founded the Chantiers de la Jeunesse (youth camps). The camps only existed in the free zone, but volunteers from the occupied zone could apply. Follow the photos of Jean Sarda, a volunteer, in July 1942.

In the early 20th century, China was a waning empire in the sway of the European nations. France, already in Indochina, was trying to expand its influence. In 1905, Victor Bermon, a French naval officer, was sent to China to assure the presence of France on the Yangtze river. He took photos of his mission and daily life in China. These images are a record of the Empire just before its collapse.