In 1986, Dieudonné graduated from high school and earned his Baccalauréat in Literature and Foreign Languages, with honours, at the age of 16.[citation needed]
In 1992, Dieudonné and Jeauffre launched the annual Jules Verne Festival in Paris, inaugurated by Jacques-Yves Cousteau. This event, later also based in Los Angeles,[1] is dedicated to exploration, education and conservation.[2][3] Then they developed a production unit to create new adventure and exploration programs for television. The Jules Verne Festival was held each year in April at the Grand Rex theatre of Paris, Europe's largest movie theatre, where it attracted more than 35,000 visitors and guests.[citation needed]
In 2005 Dieudonné and Jean-Christophe Jeauffre founded the American version of the French nonprofit Jules Verne Adventures. It is based in Downtown Los Angeles[4][5] and maintains an IRS 501(c)3 status. The inaugural American launch of the Los Angeles Jules Verne Festival[6] (October 2006 at the Shrine Auditorium) has celebrated the work of George Lucas,[7]Harrison Ford, Jane Goodall, and James Cameron, and attracted 6,300 attendees.[citation needed]
Filmmaking
From 1999 on, Dieudonné co-produced several films for TV via Jules Verne Adventures, including Devil's Islands[8] and Red and White.[9]
A five-month expedition on the Atlantic aboard the tall ship Belem led to his production of several documentaries:
Five Months on the Sea – the Jules Verne Expedition
Two fully illustrated books were also published after the expedition (Jean-Christophe Jeauffre (2003). L'expédition Jules Verne à bord du Trois-Mâts Belem (in French). Équinoxe. ISBN978-2841353521. and Jean-Christophe Jeauffre (2002). Esquisses d'un voyage Amazonie-Martinique-Açores. Carnets d'ailleurs (in French). Michel Bez (illus.). Équinoxe. ISBN9782841353460.).
All of the aforementioned films are now being distributed in the US on DVD and Blu-ray with narrations by Sir Christopher Lee and Ernest Borgnine.
The latest expedition he produced for the Mars Institute and NASA is the Northwest Passage Drive (2009–2010): the first motorized crossing of the Arctic Sea. As an executive producer and a consultant, Dieudonné is currently developing both a feature documentary called Passage to Mars and a Science Fiction feature film to be produced in Hollywood.