Le dessous des cartes

The show was first aired from 1990 to 1992, on La Sept until it stopped broadcasting, and has been on air since 1992 on the Franco-German channel Arte. The show is broadcast every Saturday at 20h00 (Paris local time, UTC+1) and rebroadcast several times a week. The format of the show has changed little since the first episode. However, the episode length expanded from 7 to 11 minutes. The transition from 11 to 26 minutes referred to by Jean-Christophe Victor in 2002 was abandoned.

In general, the show runs as follows:

• Generic top
• Introduction – Jean-Christophe Victor introduces the topic of the show on a neutral background
• Development – maps, animations and sometimes pictures while Jean-Christophe Victor talks.
• Conclusion – Jean-Christophe Victor concludes the program on a neutral point of view
• Bibliography of books which served as sources and / or may give the viewer further insight into the topic
• End Credits

Topographic maps are based on the Ordnance Survey Oxford Cartographers. The most commonly used Map projection is that of Eckert (the Pseudo-cylindrical projection). The show also uses satellite imagery from Google Earth and the first use was in the episode named: "Nigeria, rich state poor country."

The Laboratoire d'études politiques et d'analyses cartographiques (LEPAC) produces about forty episodes a year for the channel Arte. The subjects for most episodes are decided a year in advance to allow time for production. This delay in the selection of themes allows a certain hindsight regarding the chosen topic. However, on occasion, the topic of an episode is more closely related to current events. For example, the episode "Tsunami, a natural phenomenon" aired just three months after the events in South-East Asia..

Of the 300 programs (from March 2001 to May 2008), 210 (70%) have a geographical approach and 84 (28%) have a thematic approach. 6 issues remain unclassifiable: introspective (ex: "La Methode le Dessous des Cartes") or dreamers (ex: "A journey with Corto Maltese, Turkey to Samarkand"). For information and the geographical most commonly accepted:

• Africa (29)
• Latin America (21)
• Anglo-Saxon America (12)
• Europe (53)
• Polar worlds (11)
• Central Asia (10)
• East Asia (35)
• Middle East (36)
• Oceania (1)

Anecdote: The issue of 29 March 2000, for the week of April 1, is a parody of the show itself. The producing team of the show made what could be the episode of 1 April 3000 by offering a retrospective view of the past thousand years.

In a special 10th birthday episode named "La méthode du Dessous des Cartes", the aims of the show were outlined:

• Give way to Geography
• Give meaning through History
• Cross disciplines
• Everything is connected
• Avoid Ethnocentrism
• Giving a try at Future studies
• Take a stand

The main, oft repeated aim of the show is "to understand rather than to inform."

The main positions of the show and its sponsors are as follows: in favor of Human rights, Sustainable development, and the Proposals for a Palestinian state, and against the concepts of Ethnic cleansing, Just War and The Clash of Civilizations (as suggested for example by Samuel P. Huntington).

• Prix Encyclopædia Universalis 1995
• Grand Prix Video 1996 of the Académie Charles Cros
• La Clio de l'image 1997

• Official site
• Le Dessous Des Cartes at IMDb
• arte video on demand (artevod.com)
• Lepac the Center for Political Studies and Cartographic Analysis - author of the text