FMSH & Pariscience: a commitment to scientific broadcasting

Seven years of collaboration in scientific documentary production

For seven years, the FMSH has been collaborating with the Pariscience festival, a leading showcase for scientific films, which offers the general public free access to a selection of the best French and international scientific documentaries. This partnership serves a common goal: to show science in action and provide everyone with the keys to understanding its challenges and its impact on our societies.

For more than 60 years, the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme has been working to disseminate knowledge in the humanities and social sciences. In a world saturated with images, it has placed its bets on audiovisual media as an essential vehicle for transmission – a field of action in which it has been fully invested since it took over the management of Canal-U, the national platform dedicated to scientific audiovisual media, in 2015.

Founded in 2001, Canal-U was launched on the initiative of the Scientific Research Film Service, under the supervision of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. It was then entrusted to CERIMES (Centre for Multimedia Resources and Information for Higher Education), with a strong ambition: to bring together audiovisual productions from higher education and research institutions on a single portal.

https://www.fmsh.fr/service/canal-u

Canal-U, la plateforme vidéos & podcasts de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche

In 2015, the FMSH took over, drawing on its expertise in audiovisual research archives. It embarked on a major technical and editorial overhaul, with a view to promoting open science. In 2019, Canal-U opened up to higher education repositories thanks to a partnership with ABES (IdRef). In 2021, it was included in the ministerial roadmap for data, algorithms and source codes, and was among the winners of the National Fund for Open Science. In 2022, the new version of the platform went live, consolidating its role as a key public tool for the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

By continuing to develop Canal-U, the FMSH is affirming its commitment to an open and accessible scientific culture. It is in this spirit that a partnership was formed with the Pariscience festival, created in 2005 by the AST, which celebrates the best audiovisual productions dedicated to science each year.

More informations about AST

Founded in 2001, the Association Science & Télévision (AST) is a group of independent producers committed to promoting scientific films on television. It takes action to facilitate their production and distribution, encourage international co-productions and strengthen links between the audiovisual and research worlds. Through science-themed documentaries, it aims to raise awareness of major scientific advances and the challenges they represent for the future. As part of this initiative, in 2005 it created the Pariscience festival, which over the years has become a benchmark event in France and internationally.

Pariscience 2025 in figures

5,500 spectators expected
Around fifty screenings and discussions
Nearly 80 scientists and filmmakers
60 audiovisual documents to view
1 digital programme on Twitch

Every autumn, the Pariscience festival is a must-see event for fans of scientific documentaries, offering a rare opportunity to meet researchers. It offers the general public, schoolchildren and professionals alike a carefully curated selection of the best French and international documentaries, covering all disciplines and formats, free of charge. Each screening is followed by debates bringing together film crews, researchers and viewers, with a clear desire to foster dialogue between science, images and society.

Beyond the films, Pariscience is also a privileged institutional and professional event. It promotes dialogue between the worlds of research, audiovisual creation and institutions, thereby strengthening the link between science and society.

Several competitions, including ‘Symbiose’ and the Salon des Idées Scientifiques (Scientific Ideas Fair), encourage collaboration between scientists and filmmakers and stimulate the creation of new documentary projects.

Since 2019, the FMSH has been a partner of the festival. It supports the AST and promotes Pariscience through its various channels, in particular via Canal-U, which hosts content selected as part of the festival and extends its distribution beyond the event. In 2025, the collaboration reached a new milestone: the FMSH joined forces with the Symbiose competition – a 48-hour creative challenge in which randomly selected pairs, consisting of a filmmaker and a scientist, produce a short film on the researcher's topic of research. The FMSH is making its studio/forum available to support the teams in their filming, and the films produced will be broadcast on Canal-U. This is a concrete way of supporting the encounter between audiovisual creation and scientific production.

By combining their expertise, the FMSH and Pariscience are jointly reaffirming that scientific mediation can – and must – use images to reach all audiences. This long-term partnership is part of a shared commitment to making science alive, accessible and visible at the heart of society.

Article published in the third issue of the FMSH Journal.