The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers daily screenings of worldwide films. History The collection emerged from the efforts of Henri Langlois and Lotte H. Eisner in the mid 1930s to collect and screen films. Langlois had acquired one of the largest collections in the world by the beginning of World War II, only to have it nearly wiped out by the German authorities in occupied France, who ordered the destruction of all films made prior to 1937. He and his friends smuggled huge numbers of documents and films out of occupied France to protect them until the end of the war. After the war, the French government provided a small screening room, staff and subsidy for the collection, which was relocated to the Avenue de Messine. Significant French filmmakers of the 1940s and 1950s, including Robert Bresson, René Clément, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jacques Becker frequented screenings at the Cinémathèque. Directors of the New Wave (la Nouvelle Vague) school — Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Roger Vadim, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Pierre Kast — also received much of their film education by attending the collection's screenings. A meeting in 1945 in Basle between Langlois and Freddy Buache led, via Lausanne's first film club, to the founding in 1950 of the Swiss Film Archive. The events of May 1968 In June 1963, the Cinémathèque moved to the Palais de Chaillot with funds provided by André Malraux, Minister of Culture, and became subject to government overview. In February 1968, under pressure from the Ministry of Finance, Malraux required changes in the management of the Cinémathèque and dismissed Henri Langlois. A defence committee was formed, uniting notable French filmmakers (Alexandre Astruc, Claude Berri, Robert Bresson, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Jean Eustache, Georges Franju, Abel Gance, Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, Pierre Kast, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Jean Rouch, François Truffaut) together with major actors (Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claude Jade, Jean Marais and Françoise Rosay). Foreign filmmakers such as Charles Chaplin and Stanley Kubrick added their support. Protests were organized. Confrontations followed between young people, largely students, and what they saw as an authoritarian centre-right government, out of touch with the concerns of the younger generation. These demonstrations