Passage 1:
Jacob Le Maire
Jacob Le Maire (c. 1585 – 22 December 1616) was a Dutch mariner who circumnavigated the earth in 1615 and 1616. The strait between Tierra del Fuego and Isla de los Estados was named the Le Maire Strait in his honour, though not without controversy. It was Le Maire himself who proposed to the council aboard Eendracht that the new passage should be called by his name and the council unanimously agreed with Le Maire. The author or authors of The Relation took Eendracht captain Willem Schouten's side by proclaiming:

“ ... our men had each of them three cups of wine in signe of ioy for our good hap ... [and the naming of] the Straights of Le Maire, although by good right it should rather have been called Willem Schouten Straight, after our Masters Name, by whose wise conduction and skill in sayling, the same was found.”.Eendracht then rounded Cape Horn, proving that Tierra del Fuego was not a continent.

Biography
Jacob Le Maire was born in either Antwerp or Amsterdam, one of the 22 children of Maria Walraven of Antwerp and Isaac Le Maire (1558–1624) of Tournai, who was then already a prosperous merchant in Antwerp. Isaac and Maria married shortly before the Spanish siege of Antwerp in 1585 after which they fled to settle in Amsterdam. Jacob is thought to have been the oldest son, born perhaps the same year. Isaac was very successful in Amsterdam, and became one of the founders of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC). However, in 1605 Isaac Le Maire was forced to leave the company after a dispute and for the next decade tried to break the company's monopoly on the trade to the East Indies.
By 1615 Isaac had established a new company (the Australian Company) with the goal to find a new route to the Pacific and the Spice Islands, thereby evading the restrictions of the VOC. He contributed to the outfitting of two ships, the Eendracht and Hoorn, and put his son Jacob in charge of trading during the expedition. The experienced ship master Willem Schouten was captain of the Eendracht and a participant of the enterprise in equal shares with Isaac Le Maire.On 14 June 1615 Jacob le Maire and Willem Schouten sailed from Texel in the United Provinces. On 29 January 1616 they rounded Cape Horn, which they named for the Hoorn, which was lost in a fire.  The Dutch city of Hoorn was also the birthplace of Schouten. After failing to moor at the Juan Fernández Islands in early March, the ships crossed the Pacific in a fairly straight line, visiting several of the Tuamotus. Between 21 and 24 April 1616 they were the first Westerners to visit the (Northern) Tonga islands: "Cocos Island" (Tafahi), "Traitors Island" (Niuatoputapu), and "Island of Good Hope" (Niuafo'ou). On 28 April they discovered the Hoorn Islands (Futuna and Alofi), where they were very well received and stayed until 12 May. They then followed the north coasts of New Ireland and New Guinea and visited adjacent islands, including, on 24 July, what became known as the Schouten Islands.
They reached the northern Moluccas in August and finally Ternate, the headquarters of the VOC, on 12 September 1616. Here they were enthusiastically welcomed by Governor-General Laurens Reael, admiral Steven Verhagen, and the governor of Ambon, Jasper Jansz.
The Eendracht sailed on to Java and reached  Batavia on 28 October with a remarkable 84 of the original 87 crew members of both ships on board. Although they had opened an unknown route, Jan Pieterszoon Coen of the VOC claimed infringement of its monopoly of trade to the Spice Islands. Le Maire and Schouten were arrested and the Eendracht was confiscated. After being released, they returned from Batavia to Amsterdam in the company of Joris van Spilbergen, who was on a circumnavigation of the earth himself, be it via the traditional Strait of Magellan.
Le Maire was aboard the ship Amsterdam on this journey home, but died en route. Van Spilbergen was at his deathbed and took Le Maire's report of his trip, which he included in his book Mirror of the East and West Indies. The rest of the crew arrived in the Netherlands on 1 July 1617, two years and 17 days after they departed. Jacob's father Isaac challenged the confiscation and the conclusion of the VOC, but it took him until 1622 until a court ruled in his favour. He was awarded 64,000 pounds and retrieved his son's diaries (which he then published as well), and his company was allowed trade via the newly discovered route. Unfortunately, by then, the Dutch West Indies Company had claimed the same waters.

Footnotes
Passage 2:
Éric Rohmer
Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer (French: [eʁik ʁomɛʁ]; 21 March 1920 – 11 January 2010), was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher.
Rohmer was the last of the post-World War II French New Wave directors to become established. He edited the influential film journal Cahiers du cinéma from 1957 to 1963, while most of his colleagues—among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—were making the transition from critics to filmmakers and gaining international attention.
Rohmer gained international acclaim around 1969 when his film My Night at Maud's was nominated at the Academy Awards. He won the San Sebastián International Film Festival with Claire's Knee in 1971 and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Green Ray in 1986. Rohmer went on to receive the Venice Film Festival's Career Golden Lion in 2001.
After Rohmer's death in 2010, his obituary in The Daily Telegraph described him as "the most durable filmmaker of the French New Wave", outlasting his peers and "still making movies the public wanted to see" late in his career.

Early life
Rohmer was born Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer (or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer) in Nancy (also listed as Tulle), Meurthe-et-Moselle department, Lorraine, France, the son of Mathilde (née Bucher) and Lucien Schérer. Rohmer was a Catholic. He was secretive about his private life and often gave different dates of birth to reporters. He fashioned his pseudonym from the names of two famous artists: actor and director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer, author of the Fu Manchu series. Rohmer was educated in Paris and received an advanced degree in history, though he seemed equally interested and learned in literature, philosophy, and theology.

Career as a journalist
Rohmer first worked as a teacher in Clermont-Ferrand. In the mid-1940s he quit his teaching job and moved to Paris, where he worked as a freelance journalist. In 1946 he published a novel, Elisabeth (AKA Les Vacances) under the pen name Gilbert Cordier. While living in Paris, Rohmer first began to attend screenings at Henri Langlois's Cinémathèque Française, where he first met and befriended Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and other members of the French New Wave. Rohmer had never been very interested in film, preferring literature, but soon became an intense lover of films and about 1949 switched from journalism to film criticism. He wrote film reviews for such publications as Révue du Cinéma, Arts, Temps Modernes and La Parisienne.In 1950, he co-founded the film magazine La Gazette du Cinéma with Rivette and Godard, but it was short-lived. In 1951 Rohmer joined the staff of André Bazin's newly founded film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, of which he became the editor in 1956. There, Rohmer established himself as a critic with a distinctive voice; fellow Cahiers contributor and French New Wave filmmaker Luc Moullet later remarked that, unlike the more aggressive and personal writings of younger critics like Truffaut and Godard, Rohmer favored a rhetorical style that made extensive use of questions and rarely used the first person singular. Rohmer was known as more politically conservative than most of the Cahiers staff, and his opinions were highly influential on the magazine's direction while he was editor. Rohmer first published articles under his real name but began using "Éric Rohmer" in 1955 so that his family would not find out that he was involved in the film world, as they would have disapproved.Rohmer's best-known article was "Le Celluloïd et le marbre" ("Celluloid and Marble", 1955), which examines the relationship between film and other arts. In the article, Rohmer writes that in an age of cultural self-consciousness, film is "the last refuge of poetry" and the only contemporary art form from which metaphor can still spring naturally and spontaneously.In 1957 Rohmer and Claude Chabrol wrote Hitchcock (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1957), the earliest book-length study of Alfred Hitchcock. It focuses on Hitchcock's Catholic background and has been called "one of the most influential film books since the Second World War, casting new light on a filmmaker hitherto considered a mere entertainer". Hitchcock helped establish the auteur theory as a critical method and contributed to the reevaluation of the American cinema that was central to that method.
By 1963 Rohmer was becoming more at odds with some of the more radical left-wing critics at Cahiers du Cinéma. He continued to admire US films while many of the other left-wing critics had rejected them and were championing cinéma vérité and Marxist film criticism. Rohmer resigned that year and was succeeded by Rivette.

Film career
1950–1962: Shorts and early film career
In 1950 Rohmer made his first 16mm short film, Journal d'un scélérat. The film starred writer Paul Gégauff and was made with a borrowed camera. By 1951 Rohmer had a bigger budget provided by friends and shot the short film Présentation ou Charlotte et son steak. The 12-minute film was co-written by and starred Jean-Luc Godard. The film was not completed until 1961. In 1952 Rohmer began collaborating with Pierre Guilbaud on a one-hour short feature, Les Petites Filles modèles, but the film was never finished. In 1954 Rohmer made and acted in Bérénice, a 15-minute short based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. In 1956 Rohmer directed, wrote, edited and starred in La Sonate à Kreutzer, a 50-minute film produced by Godard. In 1958 Rohmer made Véronique et son cancre, a 20-minute short produced by Chabrol.
Chabrol's company AJYM produced Rohmer's feature directorial debut, The Sign of Leo (Le Signe du lion) in 1959. In the film an American composer spends the month of August waiting for his inheritance while all his friends are on vacation and gradually becomes impoverished. It included music by Louis Sagver. The Sign of Leo was later recut and rescored by distributors when Chabrol was forced to sell his production company, and Rohmer disowned the recut version. In 1962 Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder co-founded the production company Les Films du Losange (they were later joined by Pierre Coltrell in the late 1960s). Les Films du Losange produced all of Rohmer's work (except his last three features produced by La Compagnie Eric Rohmer).

1962–1972: Six Moral Tales and television work
Rohmer's career began to gain momentum with his Six Moral Tales (Six contes moraux). Each of the films in the cycle follows the same story, inspired by F. W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927): a man, married or otherwise committed to a woman, is tempted by a second woman but eventually returns to the first.For Rohmer, these stories' characters "like to bring their motives, the reasons for their actions, into the open, they try to analyze, they are not people who act without thinking about what they are doing. What matters is what they think about their behavior, rather than their behavior itself." The French word "moraliste" does not translate directly to the English "moralist" and has more to do with what someone thinks and feels. Rohmer cited the works of Blaise Pascal, Jean de La Bruyère, François de La Rochefoucauld and Stendhal as inspirations for the series.: 292  He clarified, "a moraliste is someone who is interested in the description of what goes on inside man. He's concerned with states of mind and feelings." Regarding the repetition of a single storyline, he explained that it would allow him to explore six variations of the same theme. Plus, he stated, "I was determined to be inflexible and intractable, because if you persist in an idea it seems to me that in the end you do secure a following.": 295 The first Moral Tale was The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963). This 26-minute film portrays a young man, a college student, who sees a young woman in the street and spends days obsessively searching for her. He meets a second woman who works in a bakery and begins to flirt with her, but abandons her when he finally finds the first woman. Schroder starred as the young man and Bertrand Tavernier was the narrator. The second Moral Tale was Suzanne's Career (1963). This 60-minute film portrays a young student who is rejected by one woman and begins a romantic relationship with a second. The first and second Moral Tales were never theatrically released and Rohmer was disappointed by their poor technical quality. They were not well known until after the release of the other four.In 1963 Les Films du Losange produced the New Wave omnibus film Six in Paris, of which Rohmer's short "Place de l'Etoile" was the centerpiece.: 290  After being driven out of his editor position at Cahiers, Rohmer began making short documentaries for French television. Between 1964 and 1966 Rohmer made 14 shorts for television through the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) and Télévision Scolaire. These included episodes of Filmmakers of Our Time on Louis Lumiere and Carl Theodor Dreyer, educational films on Blaise Pascal and Stéphane Mallarmé, and documentaries on the Percival legend, the industrial revolution and female students in Paris. Rohmer later said that television taught him how to make "readable images". He later said, "When you show a film on TV, the framing goes to pieces, straight lines are warped...the way people stand and walk and move, the whole physical dimension...all this is lost. Personally I don't feel that TV is an intimate medium." In 1964 Rohmer made the 13-minute short film Nadja à Paris with cinematographer Nestor Almendros.Rohmer and Schroder then sold the rights of two of their short films to French television in order to raise $60,000 to produce the feature film La Collectionneuse in 1967, the third Moral Tale. The film's budget went only to film stock and renting a house in St. Tropez as a set. Rohmer described it as a film about l'amour par désoeuvrement ("love from idleness"). La Collectionneuse won the Jury Grand Prix at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival and was praised by French film critics, though US film critics called it "boring".The fourth Moral Tale was My Night at Maud's in 1969. The film was made with funds raised by Truffaut, who liked the script, and was initially intended to be the third Moral Tale. But because the film takes place on Christmas Eve, Rohmer wanted to shoot the film in December. Actor Jean-Louis Trintignant was not available so filming was delayed for a year. The film centers on Pascal's Wager and stars Trintignant, Françoise Fabian, Marie-Christine Barrault and Antoine Vitez. My Night at Maud's was Rohmer's first successful film both commercially and critically. It was screened and highly praised at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and later won the Prix Max Ophüls. It was released in the US and praised by critics there as well. It eventually received Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Film. James Monaco wrote, "Here, for the first time the focus is clearly set on the ethical and existential question of choice. If it isn't clear within Maud who actually is making the wager and whether or not they win or lose, that only enlarges the idea of le pari ("the bet") into the encompassing metaphor that Rohmer wants for the entire series."The fifth Moral Tale was Le genou de Claire (Claire's Knee, 1970). It won the Grand Prix at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Prix Louis Delluc and the Prix Méliès, and was a huge international success. Vincent Canby called it "something close to a perfect film." It was Rohmer's second film in color. Rohmer said, "the presence of the lake and the mountains is stronger in color than in black and white. It is a film I couldn't imagine in black and white. The color green seems to me essential in that film...This film would have no value to me in black and white."The sixth and final Moral Tale was 1972's Love in the Afternoon (released as Chloe in the Afternoon in the US). Molly Haskell criticized the film for betraying the rest of the series by making a moral judgment of the main character and approving of his decision in the film.Overall, Rohmer said he wanted the Six Moral Tales "to portray in film what seemed most alien to the medium, to express feelings buried deep in our consciousness. That's why they have to be narrated in the first person singular...The protagonist discusses himself and judges his actions. I film the process."

1972–1987: Adaptations and Comedies and Proverbs
Following the Moral Tales Rohmer wanted to make a less personal film and adapted a novella by Heinrich von Kleist, La Marquise d'O... in 1976. It was one of Rohmer's most critically acclaimed films, with many critics ranking it with My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee. Rohmer stated that "It wasn't simply the action I was drawn to, but the text itself. I didn't want to translate it into images, or make a filmed equivalent. I wanted to use the text as if Kleist himself had put it directly on the screen, as if he were making a movie ... Kleist didn't copy me and I didn't copy him, but obviously there was an affinity."In 1978 Rohmer made the Holy Grail legend film Perceval le Gallois, based on a 12th-century manuscript by Chrétien de Troyes. The film received mostly poor critical reviews. Tom Milne said that the film was "almost universally greeted as a disappointment, at best a whimsical exercise in the faux-naif in its attempt to capture the poetic simplicity of medieval faith, at worse an anticlimatic blunder" and that it was "rather like watching the animation of a medieval manuscript, with the text gravely read aloud while the images — cramped and crowded, coloured with jewelled brilliance, delighting the eye with bizarre perspectives — magnificently play the role traditionally assigned to marginal illuminations." In 1980 Rohmer made a film for television of his stage production of Kleist's play Catherine de Heilbronn, another work with a medieval setting.Later in 1980 Rohmer embarked on a second series of films: the "Comedies and Proverbs" (Comédies et Proverbes), where each film was based on a proverb. The first "Comedy and proverb" was The Aviator's Wife, which was based on an idea that Rohmer had had since the mid-1940s. This was followed in 1981 with Le Beau Mariage (A Perfect Marriage), the second "Comedy and Proverb". Rohmer stated that "what interests me is to show how someone's imagination works. The fact that obsession can replace reality." In his review of the film, film critic Claude Baignères said that "Eric Rohmer is a virtuoso of the pen sketch...[He had not been] at ease with the paint tubes that Persival required, [but in this film he created] a tiny figurine whose every feature, every curl, every tone is aimed at revealing to us a state of soul and of heart." Raphael Bassan said that "the filmmaker fails to achieve in these dialogues the flexibility, the textual freedom of The Aviator's Wife. A Perfect Marriage is only a variation on the spiritual states of the petty bourgeoise who go on and on forever about the legitimacy of certain institutions or beliefs confronted by problems of the emotions. Quite simply, this is a minor variation on this central Rohmerian theme."The third "Comedy and proverb" was Pauline at the Beach in 1983. It won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival. It was based on an idea that Rohmer had in the 1950s, originally intended for Brigitte Bardot. Rohmer often made films that he had been working on for many years and stated "I can't say 'I make one film, then after that film I look for a subject and write on that subject...then I shoot.' Not at all...these are films that are drawn from one evolving mass, films that have been in my head for a long time and that I think about simultaneously."The fourth "Comedy and Proverb" was Full Moon in Paris in 1984. The film's proverb was invented by Rohmer himself: "The one who has two wives loses his soul, the one who has two houses loses his mind." The film's cinematographer Renato Berta called it "one of the most luxurious films ever made" because of the high amount of preparation put into it. The film began with Rohmer and the actors discussing their roles and reading from the film's scenario while tape recording the rehearsals. Rohmer then re-wrote the script based on these sessions and shot the film on Super 8mm as a dress rehearsal. When the film was finally shot, Rohmer often used between two and three takes for each shot, and sometimes only one take. Alain Bergala and Alain Philippon have stated that "all the art of Eric Rohmer consists of creating on the set a veritable osmosis among himself, the actors and the technicians." Rohmer even encouraged actress Pascale Ogier to design sets for the film since her character is an interior decorator. Ogier later won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival. Alain Philippon called the film "one of the most accomplished films that Rohmer has given us...and that if the film moves it is because of its own risk-taking."The fifth "Comedy and Proverb" was The Green Ray in 1986. Rohmer explained that "I was struck by the naturalness of television interviews. You can say that here, nature is perfect. If you look for it, you find it because people forget the cameras." As was becoming his custom in pre-production, Rohmer gathered his cast together to discuss the project and their characters, but then allowed each actor to invent their own dialogue. Rohmer stated that lead actress Marie Rivière "is the one who called the shots, not only by what she said, but by the way she'd speak, the way she'd question people, and also by the questions her character evoked from the others." The film was shot chronologically and in 16mm so as to be "as inconspicuous as possible, to have Delphine blend into the crowd as a way, ultimately, of accentuating her isolation." Rohmer also instructed his cinematographer Sophie Maintigneux to keep technical aspects of the shoot to a minimum so as to not interrupt or distract the actors. The film's only major expense was a trip to the Canary Islands in order to film the green rays there. Rohmer chose to première the film on Canal Plus TV, a pay-TV station that paid $130,000 for the film, which was only one fifth of its budget. Rohmer stated that "Cinema here will survive only because of television. Without such an alliance we won't be able to afford French films."  The experiment paid off when the film was a theatrical hit after being released three days after its initial broadcast.  It won the Golden Lion and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1986 Venice Film Festival.  It was mostly praised by film critics, although Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote an unfavorable review and stated "I didn't like it very much."The Sixth "Comedy and Proverb" was Boyfriends and Girlfriends (L'Ami de mon amie) in 1987.

1987–2009: Tales of the Four Seasons and later film career
He followed these with a third series in the 1990s: Tales of the Four Seasons (Contes des quatre saisons). Conte d'automne or Autumn Tale was a critically acclaimed release in 1999 when Rohmer was 79. The previous titles of the series were A Tale of Springtime (1990), A Tale of Winter (1992), and A Summer's Tale (1996).
Beginning in the 2000s, Rohmer, in his eighties, returned to period drama with The Lady and the Duke and Triple Agent. The Lady and the Duke caused considerable controversy in France, where its negative portrayal of the French Revolution led some critics to label it monarchist propaganda.  Its innovative cinematic style and strong acting performances led it to be well received elsewhere.
In 2001, his life's work was recognised when he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.In 2007, Rohmer's final film, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, was shown during the Venice Film Festival, at which he spoke of retiring.

Style
Rohmer's films concentrate on intelligent, articulate protagonists who frequently fail to own up to their desires. The contrast between what they say and what they do fuels much of the drama in his films. Gerard Legrand once said that "he is one of the rare filmmakers who is constantly inviting you to be intelligent, indeed, more intelligent than his (likable) characters." Rohmer considered filmmaking to be "closer to the novel—to a certain classical style of novel which the cinema is now taking over—than the other forms of entertainment, like the theater."Rohmer saw the full-face closeup as a device that does not reflect how we see each other and avoided its use. He avoids extradiegetic music (not coming from onscreen sound sources), seeing it as a violation of the fourth wall. He has on occasion departed from the rule by inserting soundtrack music in places in The Green Ray (1986) (released as Summer in the United States). Rohmer also tends to spend considerable time in his films showing his characters going from place to place, walking, driving, bicycling or commuting on a train, engaging the viewer in the idea that part of the day of each individual involves quotidian travel. This was most evident in Le Beau Mariage (1982), which had the female protagonist constantly traveling, particularly between Paris and Le Mans.
Rohmer typically populates his films with people in their twenties and the settings are often on pleasant beaches and popular resorts, notably in La Collectionneuse (1967), Pauline at the Beach (1983), The Green Ray (1986) and A Summer's Tale (1996). These films are immersed in an environment of bright sunlight, blue skies, green grass, sandy beaches, and clear waters. He explained that "people sometimes ask me why most of the main characters in my films are young. I don't feel at ease with older people ... I can't get people older than forty to talk convincingly."Rohmer preferred to use non-professional actors in his films. He usually held a large number of rehearsals before shooting and would shoot his films very quickly. He spent little time editing his films. He usually shot his films chronologically, and often shot scenes during the time of day in which they took place. He explained that "my films are based on meteorology. If I didn't call the weather service everyday, I couldn't make my films because they're shot according to the weather outside. My films are slaves to weather."The director's characters engage in long conversations—mostly talking about man–woman relationships but also on mundane issues like trying to find a vacation spot. There are also occasional digressions by the characters on literature and philosophy as most of Rohmer's characters are middle class and university educated.
A Summer's Tale (1996) has most of the elements of a typical Rohmer film: no soundtrack music, no close-ups, a seaside resort, long conversations between beautiful young people (who are middle class and educated) and discussions involving the characters' interests from songwriting to ethnology.
Rohmer said he wanted to look at "thoughts rather than actions", dealing "less with what people do than what is going on in their minds while they are doing it."
Beginning in the late 1970s during the production of Perceval le Gallois Rohmer began to reduce the number of crew members on his films. He first dispensed with the script supervisor, then (controversially) cut out the assistant director, then all other assistants and technical managers until, by the time he shot The Green Ray in 1986, his crew consisted only of a camera operator and a sound engineer. Rohmer stated that "I even wonder if I could work in the usual conditions of filmmaking."His style was famously criticised by Gene Hackman's character in the 1975 film Night Moves who describes viewing Rohmer's films as "kind of like watching paint dry".Rohmer was a highly literary man. His films frequently refer to ideas and themes in plays and novels, such as references to Jules Verne (in The Green Ray), William Shakespeare (in A Winter's Tale) and Pascal's wager (in Ma nuit chez Maud).

Personal life and death
Rohmer's brother was the philosopher René Schérer. In 1957, Rohmer married Thérèse Barbet. The couple had two sons. The elder, René Monzat (b. 1958), is an author and investigative journalist at, most recently, Le Monde and Mediapart. His work focuses on the French far-right.Rohmer was a devout Catholic and "ecological zealot". For years he had no telephone and refused to get into cars, which he called "immoral pollutors". For many years he was known to jog two miles to his office every morning. He was well known for his need for personal privacy and sometimes wore disguises, such as a false moustache at the New York premiere of one of his films. Rohmer's mother died without ever knowing that her son was a famous film director.

Rohmer died on the morning of 11 January 2010 at the age of 89 after a series of strokes.: 1345  He had been admitted to hospital the previous week.The former Culture Minister Jack Lang called Rohmer "one of the masters of French cinema". Director Thierry Fremaux called his work "unique".Rohmer's grave is in district 13 of Montparnasse Cemetery.
At the 2010 César Awards, actor Fabrice Luchini presented a special tribute to Rohmer:

I'm going to read a remarkable text written by Jacques Fieschi, writer, director, creator of "the cinematographe", challenger of Les cahiers du cinéma, which recently published a special edition on Eric Rohmer. Truffaut once said he was one of the greatest directors of the 20th century, Godard was his brother, Chabrol admired him, Wenders couldn't stop taking photos of him. Rohmer is a tremendous international star. The one and only French director who was in coherence with the money spent on his films and the money that his films made. I remember a phrase by Daniel Toscan Du Plantier the day Les Visiteurs opened, which eventually sold 15 million tickets: "Yes but there is this incredible film called L'arbre, le maire et la médiathèque that sold 100,000 tickets, which may sound ridiculous in comparison, but no, because but it was only playing in one theater for an entire year." A happy time for cinema when this kind of thing could happen. Rohmer. Here is a tribute from Jacques Fieschi: "We are all connected with the cinema, at least for a short time. The cinema has its economical laws, its artistic laws, a craft that once in a while rewards us or forgets us. Éric Rohmer seems to have escaped from this reality by inventing his own laws, his own rules of the game. One could say his own economy of the cinema that served his own purpose, which could skip the others, or to be more accurate that couldn't skip the audience with its originality. He had a very unique point of view on the different levels of language and on desire that is at work in the heart of each and every human being, on youth, on seasons, on literature, of course, and one could say on history. Éric Rohmer, this sensual intellectual, with his silhouette of a teacher and a walker. As an outsider he made luminous and candid films in which he deliberately forgot his perfect knowledge of the cinema in a very direct link with the beauty of the world." The text was by Jacques Fieschi and it was a tribute to Éric Rohmer. Thank you.
On 8 February 2010, the Cinémathèque Française held a special tribute to Rohmer that included a screening of Claire's Knee and a short video tribute to Rohmer by Jean-Luc Godard.

Awards and nominations
Filmography
Features
Notes
Passage 3:
Julie Bertuccelli
Julie Mathilde Charlotte Claire Bertuccelli is a French director born February 12, 1968, in Boulogne-Billancourt.She is particularly known for her documentary La Cour de Babel released in 2014 and the feature film L'Arbre released in 2010.

Biography
After studies in hypokhâgne, then khâgne, and a master of philosophy, Julie Bertuccelli became, for ten years, assistant director on many feature films, TV movies and short films with Otar Iosseliani, Rithy Panh, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Emmanuel Finkiel, Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Louis Bertuccelli, Christian de Chalonge, René Féret, and Pierre Etaix.Following an introduction to documentary filmmaking in 1993 at Ateliers Varan, she directed fifteen documentaries for Arte, France 3 and France 5, including Une liberté!, La Fabrique des Judges, Welcome to the department store, A world in fusion, Otar Iosseliani, the whistling blackbird, The Glasberg Mystery, Antoinette Fouque, what is a woman? ...
His first feature film Since Otar left ... has been crowned by twenty awards in France and abroad, including the Grand Prize of the Critics' Week at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, the César de la meilleur first work in 2004, the Marguerite Duras Prize 2003 and the Michel d'Ornano Award 2003 in Deauville.
L'Arbre is her second feature film. It was nominated for three Césars.Her documentary The Court of Babel, released in theaters in March 2014, has been selected in several festivals, including those of New York, Rome, Abu Dhabi, Sheffield, Rio, Montreal, Tokyo, Cairo, and San Francisco.
Her documentary Latest News from the Cosmos (November 2016), received the Audience Award from the Rencontres du Cinéma Documentaire in Montreuil and the FIFA Grand Prix in Montreal (2018).
Her last feature film, Claire Darling with Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni, released in French theaters in February 2019 Claire Darling grossed $0 in North America and a total worldwide of $1 million. With 85 000 spectators in France, the film is a heavy public failure.
Julie Bertuccelli has chaired the Scam since June 2017, having been the first woman elected to this position in 2013, as well as the brand new Cinematheque of the documentary she created with Scam (with which she also created the Eye of 'Or, the Documentary Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015). She was co-chair with Michel Hazanavicius of the Civil Society of Producers' Authors Producers (ARP) in 2016.
She is the daughter of the director Jean-Louis Bertuccelli and the widow of cinematographer Christophe Pollock.

Filmography
Director
Documentaries
1993: Un métier comme un autre
1994: Une liberté !
1995: Un dimanche en champagne
1995: Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame
1996: Trait d'union
1996: Saint-Denis, les couleurs de la ville
1997: La Fabrique des juges
1999: Bienvenue au grand magasin
2000: Les Îles éoliennes (coll. Voyages, Voyages)
2006: Un monde en fusion
2006: Otar Iosseliani, le merle siffleur (Coll. Cinéastes de notre temps)
2007: Stage Les chantiers nomades: l'acteur concret au cinéma, autour des objets
2008: Le Mystère Glasberg
2008: Antoinette Fouque, qu'est-ce qu'une femme (Coll. Empreintes)
2014: La Cour de Babel
2016: Dernières nouvelles du cosmos

Feature films
2003: Depuis qu'Otar est parti…
2010: L'Arbre
2018:  Claire Darling

Scriptwriter
2002: Depuis qu'Otar est parti…
2010: L'Arbre
2018: Claire Darling

Assistant director
1988–1990: Divers série: Salut les homards, Les six compagnons, Souris noire from Pierre Étaix
1990: Aujourd'hui peut-être from Jean-Louis Bertuccelli
1990: Kaminsky, un flic à Moscou from Stéphane Kurc
1991: Promenades d'été from René Féret
1991: La Chasse aux papillons from Otar Iosseliani
1992: Precheur en eau trouble from Georges Lautner
1992: Trois couleurs: Bleu from Krzysztof Kieślowski
1992: Trois couleurs: Blanc from Krzysztof Kieślowski
1993: Les Dessous du Moulin Rouge from Nils Tavernier
1994: Le Clandestin from Jean-Louis Bertuccelli
1994: Madame Jacques sur la Croisette from Emmanuel Finkiel
1995: L'Appât from Bertrand Tavernier
1995: Le Bel Été 1914 from Christian de Chalonge
1996: Brigands, chapitre VII from Otar Iosseliani
1997: Un soir après la guerre from Rithy Panh

See also
List of female film and television directors
Passage 4:
Ian Barry (director)
Ian Barry is an Australian director of film and TV.

Select credits
Waiting for Lucas (1973) (short)
Stone (1974) (editor only)
The Chain Reaction (1980)
Whose Baby? (1986) (mini-series)
Minnamurra (1989)
Bodysurfer (1989) (mini-series)
Ring of Scorpio (1990) (mini-series)
Crimebroker (1993)
Inferno (1998) (TV movie)
Miss Lettie and Me (2002) (TV movie)
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008) (documentary)
The Doctor Blake Mysteries (2013)
Passage 5:
L'Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (French: L'Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque; known also as Les sept hasards) is a 1993 French comedy-drama film written and directed by Éric Rohmer. The film was shown at the 1993 Montreal World Film Festival where it received the FIPRESCI prize.
The frame story involves the mayor of an isolated French village who, to further his political ambitions, secures a grant to build a sporting and cultural centre, but the necessary felling of a fine willow outrages the schoolteacher and his daughter. Within the frame there is much debate about the current state of France: city versus country, agriculture versus industry, conservatism versus progress, the environment versus growth.

Plot
In Saint-Juire-Champgillon, a remote village of traditional left-wing adherence in the Vendée, Julien Dechaumes has inherited the manor house and grounds and has been elected mayor, though he spends much of his time in Paris with his mistress. There he successfully lobbies the Ministry of Culture for a grant to build a state-of-the-art sports and media centre. By enhancing his reputation in the area, it will boost his chances of entering national politics under the socialist banner.
Opinion in the village is mixed, with the most passionate opposition coming from the schoolteacher, for whom the destruction of a 100-year-old willow symbolises all that is wrong about the plan. When a journalist on a left-wing magazine visits the village to talk to people, her editor cuts her piece to focus on the teacher and the tree. The teacher's ten-year-old daughter explains to the mayor that all the children want is not the sophisticated facilities on offer but just green space and trees. A survey reveals that the water table has dropped alarmingly, needing costly groundworks that make the whole project unviable.

Cast
Pascal Greggory as Julien Dechaumes, the mayor
Arielle Dombasle as Bérénice Beaurivage, the mayor's lover
Fabrice Luchini as Marc Rossignol, the school teacher
Clémentine Amouroux as Blandine Lenoir, the reporter
François-Marie Banier as Régis Lebrun-Blondet, the magazine editor

External links
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque at IMDb
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque at AllMovie
The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque at Rotten Tomatoes
Passage 6:
William le Maire de Warzée d'Hermalle
William "Willy" le Maire de Warzée d'Hermalle (French pronunciation: [wiljam lə mɛːʁ də vaʁtse dɛʁmal]; 7 March 1879 –1966) was a Belgian tennis player. He has been named as among the best male tennis players in Belgian history.Le Maire de Warzée d'Hermalle reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 1904 and 1908.Le Maire de Warzée d'Hermalle was born into the Belgian nobility, the son of Marie-Léon-Hubert le Maire Warzée d'Hermalle (born 1848) and Noëmie Constance Caroline Georgine Valérie de Warzée d'Hermalle (born in Beaufays in 1850). His elder brother, Marie-Georges-Gérard-Léon le Maire de Warzée d'Hermalle, Baron de Warzée d'Hermalle (1877–1931), was a diplomat and Belgian ambassador to Iran, Japan and China, who married Dorothy Hall, daughter of Irish writer Owen Hall.
Passage 7:
Olav Aaraas
Olav Aaraas (born 10 July 1950) is a Norwegian historian and museum director.
He was born in Fredrikstad. From 1982 to 1993 he was the director of Sogn Folk Museum, from 1993 to 2010 he was the director of Maihaugen and from 2001 he has been the director of the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. In 2010 he was decorated with the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav.
Passage 8:
Isaac Le Maire
Isaac Le Maire  (c. 1558 in Tournai – September 20, 1624 in Egmond aan den Hoef) was a Walloon-born entrepreneur, investor, and a sizeable shareholder of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He is best known for his constant strife with the VOC, which ultimately led to the discovery of Cape Horn.
Isaac Le Maire was born in 1558 or 1559 in Tournai. He learned the trade from his merchant brother-in-law Jacques van de Walle. Isaac had four brothers, three of whom were merchants. Already in 1584 he was registered in Antwerp as a wealthy grocer. At the time, he was also captain of the company of the Antwerp militia. He rented the house of Bourgognien Schilt, but in 1585 after the fall of Antwerp he fled to the northern Netherlands.
In 1585 he settled in Amsterdam. He was married in Antwerp to Maria Jacobsdr. Walraven and they had 22 children, and one of them, his son Jacob, would go down in history as an explorer. In 1641 his son Maximiliaen became the first VOC chief of Dejima in Japan.
Initially, Isaac Le Maire was the largest shareholder in the VOC.

Merchant in Amsterdam
In 1592 his name was registered for the first time in Amsterdam as a participant in the oldest marine insurance policy. In the following years he grew into the trade in European waters. Initially, he wasn't one of the wealthiest merchants, but he could make major investments by ensuring warrant positions within the direct and indirect family network.
Together with Peter van de Pulle and Dirck van Os he constituted a company for trading in Russia. They carried Baltic grain and timber to Spain. Ships with leather, wax, fur and caviar from Archangelsk often were destined for Venice and Livorno. They also traded in bills of exchange, chartering and marine insurances. Between 1594 and 1598 he had a major position in the fish trade between British ports and Spain.
After Cornelis de Houtman made the first trip to the Indies from 1595 to 1597, Le Maire, like many other merchants, plunged into the Indian adventure. In 1599 he and several others in Amsterdam established the Brabant Company, which carried out two voyages to the Indies. The Brabant Company was very successful, it quickly yielded the company 400% profit.
In 1600 he decided to concentrate on trade with the East Indies, but at that time he already acted in the West Indies as well. In 1601 he officially became a citizen of Amsterdam, which was no doubt because of the merger of the New Brabant Company and the Old Company into the First United East Indies Company in Amsterdam. This company, in which Le Maire was a participant, fitted out eight ships to the Indies, led by Jacob van Heemskerk.

Shareholder of the Dutch East India Company
In 1602, at the insistence of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, all Dutch trading companies merged into the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) (also known as the Dutch East India Company). Le Maire applied for shares for the sum of 85,000 guilders and he became the largest shareholder in the VOC.  He got the high position of governor of the VOC. But he soon fell into conflict with the VOC and the Amsterdam Consistory as a result of malpractice concerning the journey of Wybrand van Warwijck in 1602. There were rumours that Le Maire intentionally did not submit receipts and other evidence of his share in the costs. The partners of the VOC let him be sued by the sheriff, but Le Maire settled the matter for 1200 guilders. The details of the offence were held secret. Because of this matter le Maire was forced to leave the VOC in 1605, while he also had to waive acting as a competitor of the VOC. This event was the foundation of his resentment and opposition against the VOC for the rest of his life. After leaving the VOC, he threw himself upon the European coasting trade, especially in grain. However, the thought of the lucrative trade with the Indies haunted him.

Competitor of the Dutch East India Company
Le Maire found his first opportunity to thwart the VOC in the efforts of France to set up a French trading company for India. King Henry IV of France invited him in 1607 for that purpose. Le Maire advised the French on the establishment and organization of a company, and in doing so ignored the competition stipulation with the VOC. However, at that time a French company was not yet established.
Next came the idea to involve Henry Hudson in the French plans. Hudson had already made two unsuccessful attempts for England to find a new North-Eastern passage, and in 1608 he came to the Netherlands to interest the VOC for that plan. He came in contact with Le Maire who proposed to the king of France to finance this expedition. With this attempt to find a new route to the Indies, Le Maire would not commit a breach of contract with the VOC, because the VOC only had a patent to trade via the Cape of Good Hope and the Strait of Magellan, until then the only two known routes to the Indies. The VOC got scent of this intention and offered Hudson a better contract, which ultimately led to his famous third voyage in 1609, discovering the river that was named after him. After the VOC had caught away Hudson, Le Maire and the king of France secretly came to an agreement to make the North-Eastern journey with another captain. The newly to be discovered strait would be named after the French king, and the new discoveries would be made under the French flag. However, the voyage, led by Melchior van den Kerckhove, was a failure.
In 1609, Isaac Le Maire travelled together with Joris van Spilbergen, Balthazar de Moucheron and others to Paris, again to discuss the formation of a French East India Company. De Moucheron played a double role in these discussions, because at one point he asked the ambassador of the Netherlands what it would be worth if he would disrupt the proceedings. The discussions so flagged because of mistrust by the French in Le Maire. Within the VOC the intrigues of Le Maire led to indignation, but it did not result in actual actions against him, probably because the Republic was not looking for a conflict with France during the war with Spain. In 1610 the King of France was killed and thus plans for a French East India Company were shelved.

Speculator against the Dutch East India Company
Isaac Le Maire also tried to use his knowledge of the VOC to cross the company financially. In 1609 he and eight others founded a secret company with the purpose to trade in VOC shares. Le Maire owned nearly one quarter of its shares. This so-called "Grote Compagnie" sold short shares of the VOC, that is, without actually owning them. By the time these shares were to be delivered, there was an interest in keeping the share price as low as possible. Le Maire probably expected that the competition by the still to be created French East India Company would ensure that the share price of the VOC dropped significantly. However, the French company was shelved. Rumours were spread to depress the prices, anyway. Such activities were detrimental to the (existing) VOC shareholders, who sometimes were forced to sell their shares at a low price. In particular, in 1609 the share price fell significantly, and the VOC imputed this to the machinations of Le Maire.
The VOC attempted via the States-General of the Netherlands to impose restrictions on free trade in VOC shares, which the company of Le Maire fiercely resisted. They claimed, the price drop was the result of the bad course of actions of the VOC. But the States-General decided in 1610 to prohibit the sale of shares not in possession (short selling). During 1610 and 1611 the stock price of the VOC increased. The company of Le Maire then suffered big losses because many shares had to be delivered at a lower price than the market. They were therefore compelled to deliver shares at a loss. Several members of his company went bankrupt and Le Maire had also suffered significant losses, but he could still meet his obligations. This fiasco led him to withdraw from Amsterdam.

Dutch East India Company monopoly broken
Isaac Le Maire sold his property in Amsterdam and retired to his possessions in Egmond aan den Hoef, which he had bought between 1598 and 1600 from the estate of the Count of Egmont. After some time, he again started to make plans to break the VOC monopoly. The VOC owned by patent from the States-General the Dutch monopoly on travels to the Indies via the Cape of Good Hope and through the Strait of Magellan, until then the only two known passages to the Indies. From various travel accounts Le Maire assumed that south of the Magellan Strait another passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean could exist. In 1614 he founded the Austraalse Compagnie for the purpose of discovering this passage, which would fall outside the VOC monopoly. The voyage was prepared in Hoorn. Two ships were fitted out, the Eendracht and the Hoorn. The journey would be made under the responsibility of his son Jacob Le Maire. Willem Schouten was recruited as an experienced captain. The sailing orders expressly forbade a passage through the Strait of Magellan, even if a new route to the Pacific Ocean could not be found. Furthermore, the expedition was forbidden to trade on the coasts where the VOC had a trading post. At that time, there was still the expectation that a great unknown South Land would exist. Isaac Le Maire hoped to discover it, and in this way tap into an unimagined trading area. But above all, his motive was to circumvent the VOC monopoly. But Isaac gave his son a remarkable secret instruction: although the official sailing order was that no trade should be driven on the coasts where the VOC was established, on arrival in the Indies his son had to make clear to the administrators of the VOC that their monopoly had not been violated, because they had not sailed via the Cape of Good Hope or the Strait of Magellan. Then, he should ask permission to still be allowed to trade. Isaac le Maire anticipated it would not be granted, so Jacob would then have to do everything needed to win Governor-General Gerard Reynst, who had been, like Isaac Le Maire, a participant in the Brabant Company, for their cause. This even went so far as to Jacob asking Van Reynst the hand of one of his daughters. In this way Isaac le Maire tried to sow dissension within the VOC, because if Gerard Reynst allowed them to trade in this way it could lead to a major conflict within the VOC.
On June 14, 1615 the two ships set sail from Texel. The journey was a success in that, with the discovery of the passage round Cape Horn, the monopoly of the VOC was indeed broken, but the unknown South Land was not discovered, and the secret instruction could not be put into action because Gerard Reynst was already deceased.
After the ships had left Texel, the VOC got wind of the real intention of the travel. Therefore, the order was sent to the Indies that, if the expedition would arrive there, the ships would have to be confiscated because of a breach of the VOC's patent. And so it happened. Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten were sent back to the Republic, but Jacob Le Maire died during the return voyage. The VOC attempted to rewrite history by assigning the new discoveries to Willem Schouten.

The aftermath of the voyage
Isaac Le Maire had to fight many years to obtain his right. In 1619 the court ruled that the ship Eendracht was unlawfully seized by the VOC. The journals were to be returned to Le Maire, and in 1622 Le Maire could finally publish the Spieghel der Australische Navigatie door den Wijtvermaerden ende Cloeckmoedighen Zee-heldt Jacob Le Maire, to do justice to the discoveries of his son. For the damage, he was awarded 64,000 pounds. However, the court ruled that the Austraalse Compagnie was not allowed to trade in the Indian region, but that they did have the right to travel across the newly discovered route around Cape Horn. However, one year earlier the Dutch West India Company was established and in its patent it received also the monopoly on travels through the Strait of Magellan and other routes in that region. This was contrary to the rights that were granted to Le Maire's Austraalse Compagnie.
Le Maire died on September 20, 1624. He was buried in the Buurkerk in Egmond-Binnen, and on his tombstone he had written that he had lost during 30 years (except for his honour) 1.5 million guilders, a considerable sum at that time. His Australian Company continued the legal fight, but ultimately the States-General decided in 1644 to the detriment of the company.

See also
Financial history of the Dutch Republic
Passage 9:
Dana Blankstein
Dana Blankstein-Cohen (born March 3, 1981) is the executive director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School. She was appointed by the board of directors  in November 2019.  Previously she was the CEO of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television. She is a film director, and an Israeli culture entrepreneur.

Biography
Dana Blankstein was born in Switzerland in 1981 to theatre director Dedi Baron and Professor Alexander Blankstein. She moved to Israel in 1983 and grew up in Tel Aviv.
Blankstein graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, Jerusalem in 2008 with high honors. During her studies she worked as a personal assistant to directors Savi Gabizon on his film Nina's Tragedies and to Renen Schorr on his film The Loners.  She also directed and shot 'the making of' film on Gavison's film Lost and Found. Her debut film Camping competed at the Berlin International Film Festival, 2007.

Film and academic career
After her studies, Dana founded and directed the film and television department at the Kfar Saba municipality. The department encouraged and promoted productions filmed in the city of Kfar Saba, as well as the established cultural projects, and educational community activities.
Blankstein directed the mini-series "Tel Aviviot" (2012). From 2016-2019 was the director of the Israeli Academy of Film and Television.
In November 2019 Dana Blankstein Cohen was appointed the new director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School where she also oversees the Sam Spiegel International Film Lab. In 2022, she spearheaded the launch of the new Series Lab and the film preparatory program for Arabic speakers in east Jerusalem.

Filmography
Tel Aviviot (mini-series; director, 2012)
Growing Pains (graduation film, Sam Spiegel; director and screenwriter, 2008)
Camping (debut film, Sam Spiegel; director and screenwriter, 2006)
Passage 10:
Peter Levin
Peter Levin is an American director of film, television and theatre.

Career
Since 1967, Levin has amassed a large number of credits directing episodic television and television films. Some of his television series credits include Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, James at 15, The Paper Chase, Family, Starsky & Hutch, Lou Grant, Fame, Cagney & Lacey, Law & Order and Judging Amy.Some of his television film credits include Rape and Marriage: The Rideout Case (1980), A Reason to Live (1985), Popeye Doyle (1986), A Killer Among Us (1990), Queen Sized (2008) and among other films. He directed "Heart in Hiding", written by his wife Audrey Davis Levin, for which she received an Emmy for Best Day Time Special in the 1970s.
Prior to becoming a director, Levin worked as an actor in several Broadway productions. He costarred with Susan Strasberg in "[The Diary of Ann Frank]" but had to leave the production when he was drafted into the Army. He trained at the Carnegie Mellon University. Eventually becoming a theatre director, he directed productions at the Long Wharf Theatre and the Pacific Resident Theatre Company. He also co-founded the off-off-Broadway Theatre [the Hardware Poets Playhouse] with his wife Audrey Davis Levin and was also an associate artist of The Interact Theatre Company.