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CULTURAL/EVENTS AGENDA
FEBRUARY 2010
This agenda presents a selection of French or French-related events in the Midwest.
For a complete calendar of events for the French and French-speaking associations
in your area, please visit their respective web sites.
Agenda culturel pour la région de Chicago / Cultural Agenda for the Chicago area: "LIAISON" |
MILWAUKEE - FEBRUARY 5 - APRIL 18, 2010: SPATIAL CITY: THE ARCHITECTURE OF IDEALISM
Spatial City, is the first exhibition in the United States of artwork drawn from France’s network of Regional Contemporary Art Funds (Frac).
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BEETHOVEN PROJECT TRIO CONCERT SERIES
FEBRUARY 10 AT 7 PM
The Beethoven Project Trio, Sang Mee Lee, violin - George Lepauw, piano - Wendy Warner, cello, kicks off a series of concerts in Chicago at the intimate PianoForte Salon, in the beautiful historic Fine Arts Building -
410 South Michigan Avenue, Suite 820. Complimentary reception offered after the concert. The series of concerts continues on Wednesday, March 3 - Wednesday, April 7 - both at the PianoForte Salon on Michigan Avenue - Thursday, May 6 and Friday May 7 - the last two at the beautiful Nichols Hall, of the Music Institute of Chicago in Evanston. For tickets please visit http://beethovenprojecttrio.com/schedule or call (312) 772 5821. |
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CINE TEENS - LES LUTINS DU COURT METRAGE
FEBRUARY 11 FROM 5-6 PM
Come with us and enjoy this special and eclectic selection of short French films! A unique opportunity to discover the latest trend in French movie making and to meet other Chicago teens who share the same interest. A goûter will be served before the movie.
Alliance Française de Chicago. |
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LES LUTINS DU COURT METRAGE
FEBRUARY 26 AT 7 PM
A winning selection of Europe’s best short films of the year! For twelve years, the “impish” French organization Les Lutins du court-métrage has worked to promote and disseminate short films to a wider audience. This ecletic selection is an unique opportunity to discover the latest trends in French movie making. Wine served at 6:00 p.m.
Alliance Française de Chicago. |
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TRACING PROUST
THROUGH MAY 23
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) has been called the greatest novelist of the twentieth century. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Kolb-Proust Archive together own one of the world's leading research collections of Marcel Proust materials. This exhibition includes original manuscripts, correspondence, and prints from these collections that expose traces of the compositional process, revealing the creative play of Proust's artistry and the artist himself. Guest Curators: Caroline Szylowicz and Chatham Ewing. Exhibition sponsored by Illinois Arts Council, a State Agency; Krannert Art Museum Director's Circle; and Krannert Art Museum Council
Krannert Art Museum - University of Illinois at Urbana. |
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| EARLY WARNING - COMING UP IN MARCH |
MARCH 5 AT 8 PM: ORCHESTRE PHILARMONIQUE DE RADIO FRANCE |
Très magnifique! The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, famous for its distinctive French sound, offers an all-Ravel program led by its gifted music director Myung-Whun Chung and featuring internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter singing Shéhérazade. She “brilliantly conveys the exotic allure of Ravel’s mesmerizing score.” —The Independent
Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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MARCH 5 AT 6PM : FESTIVAL DE LA FRANCOPHONIE - SOIREE COMMUNE
The Alliance Française of Chicago and our Francophone friends in Chicago invite you to an evening of music, food, fun and surprises. La Francophonie represents a carnaval of cultures spanning the continents from Marrakesh to Montréal and from Toulouse to Tahiti. Join us to sample food, dance to the music and try your luck at our raffle on Friday March 5, the kick off evening to our month long-celebration of la Francophonie. Bienvenue à tous, et que la fête commence! Complete information. |
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FESTIVAL DE LA FRANCOPHONIE : SOIREE FRANCAISE
Don't miss the Soirée France with best-selling French author Delphine de Vigan!
Monday, March 08, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. at the Alliance française - 54 W. Chicago Ave. Free admission. |
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On the International Women’s Day, the Cultural Services of the French Consulate in Chicago invite you to come and spend an evening with Delphine de Vigan, short-listed for the 2009 prix Goncourt and best selling author of “No et moi”, an intense, brilliant novel about home and homelessness. Translated in 20 languages and winner of Le Prix des Libraires, “No et moi” is currently being made into a movie. |
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The US Tour is organized by the Délégation Générale de l’Alliance Française aux États-Unis and the Cultural services at the Consulate general of France in Chicago in collaboration with the Rotary Club Paris Academy and with the generous support of the Jean Bodfish Brown Fund.
Sponsored in part by the Cultural Services of Consulate General of France in Chicago. |
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MARCH 5- APRIL 1: 13TH EUROPEAN UNION FILM FESTIVAL
The European Union Film Festival, was founded by the Gene Siskel Film Center in 1998. The annual festival program of more than 60 feature films, all Chicago premieres, ranges from work by established directors, including some of the most renowned names in world cinema, to the work of first-time and emerging directors and films from nations with developing film industries. Complete information. |
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RFI IN THE UNITED STATES
RFI has signed an agreement with AudioNow to broadcast its French programs on the telephone network, 24 hours a day, in 5 American cities: Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami and New York City. You can now listen to RFI in Chicago by calling the following phone number (only local charges will apply): 312.646.7684. On November 15 2009, 6 more U.S. cities will be added to the list including, New Orleans, Lafayette, Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Washington D.C. where RFI will be available 24 hours a day in French. Read the press release. |
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MORE EVENTS
Agenda culturel pour la région de Chicago / Cultural Agenda for the Chicago area: LIAISON
Evénements économiques / Economic Events: ECONOMIE/BUSINESS |
THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG directed by Jacques Demy
FEBRUARY 12 AT 7 PM
Just in time for Valentine’s Day: beautiful umbrella-store clerk Genevieve (a luminous Catherine Deneuve) and auto mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) fall in love in the rainy town of Cherbourg, but their romance is compromised when Guy is drafted into the army and Genevieve is pursued by a wealthy diamond merchant. |
| The drama-drenched film classic plays like a day-glo pop-art opera, with the entire script sung to the melodies of composer Michel Legrand. Shown in 35 mm. Introduced by Matt Socey of WFYI. Come early and enjoy dinner with your sweetie at Nourish Café. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is part of Winter Nights Films at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Winter Nights promotional support provided by NUVO Newsweekly. Indianapolis Museum of Art - The Toby |
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SCREEEN PEACE FILM SERIES
THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO, directed by Lisa Jackson
FEBRUARY 4 AT 7 PM |
| Since 1998 a brutal war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Over 4 million people have died. And there are the uncountable casualties: the many tens of thousands of women and girls who have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. The world knows nothing of these women. Their stories have never been told. They suffer and die in silence. In The Greatest Silence these brave women finally speak. This is a FREE but ticketed event. Director Lisa Jackson is scheduled to be present. French and Swahili languages with English subtitles. Browning Cinema - Notre Dame University. |
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SOUTH BEND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (CHAMBER II): FRENCH IMPRESSIONS
FEBRUARY 6 AT 3 PM |
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An afternoon filled with French melodic music includes Faure's Masques et Bergamasques, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, and Debussy-Ravel's Sarabande. Ketevan Badridze, native of Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia and faculty member of Indiana University at South Bend will perform Piano Concert No. 2 by Saint Saëns. Tickets: $25, $12.50 faculty/staff, $23 seniors, and $5 all students.
Leighton Concert Hall - Notre Dame University |
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EXPANDING THE BOUDERIES: SELECTED DRAWINGS FROM THE YVONNE AND GABRIEL P. WEISBERG COLLECTION
UNTIL FEBRUARY 28 |
This traveling exhibition organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts features approximately fifty drawings, watercolors, and pastels selected from the superb collection of Minnesota collectors Gabriel and Yvonne Weisberg. The exhibition was curated by Lisa Michaux, Ph.D. curator of Prints and Drawings, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Dr. Michaux and Dr. Weisberg co-authored the exhibition catalogue. The exhibition will introduce artists such as Adolphe Appian, François Bonvin, Edgar Chahine, Louis Weldon Hawkins, Auguste Lepère, Léon Lhermitte, Charles Milcendeau, and Théodule Ribot.
O'Shaughnessy Galleries II and III Snite Museum – Notre Dame University
Photo : Study for The Civil Marriage, 1881 - Henri Gervex (French, 1852--1929) black and white chalk on tan wove paper - Collection of Yvonne and Gabriel P. Weisberg. |
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RELATED EVENT - DISCUSSION WITH GABRIEL AND YVONNE WIESBERG
FEBRUARY 26
Art collectors and scholars Gabriel and Yvonne Weisberg will visit the museum to discuss their 50 French 19th-Century drawings on view in the Snite Museum and to interact with ND students. Expanding the Boundaries: Selected Drawings from the Yvonne and Gabriel P. Weisberg Collection, is a traveling exhibition organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Snite Museum – Notre Dame University. |
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NEWS AND NIGHTMARES: HOMER, ERNST, AND WOOD ENGRAVING
THROUGH JUNE 13
This exhibition looks at 19th-century wood engraved illustrations created for the mass media from the perspective of two radically different artists. From 1857 through the 1880s, Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910) designed over 200 wood engravings for illustrated periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly. Homer’s drawn-on-the-spot illustrations depicted the public and private life of Americans, including their entertainments, holidays, and sports, as well as portraits of political figures and events, and images of the Civil War. In 1933, Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891-1976) cut up and recombined illustrated melodramatic and romantic 19th-century French periodicals to create his astonishing Surrealist collage novel. |
News & Nightmares includes 16 prints designed by Winslow Homer from the Art Center’s complete collection of Winslow Homer’s wood engravings. The exhibition also features 26 images from the Art Center’s recent acquisition, Max Ernst’s une semaine de bonté, ou les septs elements capitaux (A Week of Kindness, or the Seven Deadly Elements) 1934. Plese visit the website for other programs related to this exhibition.
Des Moines Art Center - Print Gallery
Photo: Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910) Thanksgiving Day—The Church. Published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on December 23, 1865. Electrotype from wood engraving, with typographic text on paper 13 15/16 x 9 3/16 inches (page); 15 7/8 x 10 3/4 inches (image) Gelman 156. Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Gift of Richard and Kay Ward, 2003.110 |
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COCO BEFORE CHANEL directed by Anne Fontaine, 2009
FEBRUARY 5-11
The Chanel brand is an iconic one in the fashion world. Coco Before Chanel chronicles the label’s humble origins by tracing the life of its founder, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, from young orphan through adulthood as a modern woman who channeled her life’s experiences into her fashion. Anchored by the charismatic performance of Audrey Tautou (Amelie) as Chanel, Coco Before Chanel combines biopic, romance, and period drama into a package befitting the elegance and beauty of Chanel couture. Adapted from a nonfiction book by Edmonde Charles-Roux, The Miami Herald calls Coco Before Chanel “an engrossing, classy period piece.” Bijou Cinema - Complete information. |
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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MASTERS: THE EVOLUTION OF THE REPRODUCTIVE PRINT
THROUGH MAY 23 |
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Spanning 500 years of Western printmaking history, In the Footsteps of Masters features approximately 80 reproductive prints from the 15th to the 20th century, including original prints and drawings by artists Albrecht Dürer, Annibale Carracci, Jusepe De Ribera, Edouard Manet, Jean-Baptiste Corot, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, William Blake, Francisco Goya, and Grant Wood, as well as reproductive prints made after the works of famous masters such as Raphael, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, Jan Vermeer, Jan Van Eyck, Titian, Michelangelo, and others.
Figge Art Museum - University of Iowa Museum |
| Photo: Cornelis Galle the Elder (Flemish; Antwerp, 1576-1650), Procne Showing Tereus the Head of his Child (after Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish; Antwerp, 1577-1640), c. 1637, Engraving, Museum purchase 1980.92 |
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THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: EUROPEAN DRAWINGS AND PRINTS FROM THE PULGRAM-MCSPARRAN
THROUGH MARCH 14
The Museum of Art has an outstanding collection of the graphic work of early 20th-century art, particularly the work of the German Expressionists. The present exhibition includes drawings and prints by artists such as George Grosz, whose Hogarthian critique of post-WWI Germany still sears the mind; Ernst Kirchner, a leading figure in Die Brücke and the German Expressionist movement; and Oskar Kokoschka, whose vigorous style is characteristic of the later generation of Expressionists. Among the group of works are less typical but lyrical landscapes by Kirchner, Lovis Corinth, and Erich Heckel. This second component of the Pulgram-McSparran Collection features the social commentary, bold graphic imagery, and delectation of the female form that is embodied in the work of outstanding European artists from roughly 1920 to 1950.
The University of Michigan Museum of Art – Ann Arbor |
Emil Nolde
Germany, 1867–1956 Actress
Watercolor on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection, 2007/2.102 |
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GALLERY TALK / LECTURE : EATING THE ENLIGHTENMENT - EUROPEAN DINING IN THE 18TH CENTURY
FEBRUARY 20 AT 2 PM
Renowned food historian Ivan Day discusses the food, table ornament and dining customs of 18th-century Europe. He provides a glimpse into period kitchens through illustrations of re-created food, including princely dishes originally made for the Archbishop of Salzburg, and sugar sculptures made with original molds from the pastry room of the Princesse de Lamballe, confidante to Queen Marie Antoinette.
Detroit Institute of Art. |
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LA DANSE directed by Frederick Wiseman
FEBRUARY 5-12 |
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With his 38th film, Frederick Wiseman — arguably America’s finest documentary filmmaker — turns his attention to one of the world’s great ballet companies, the Paris Opera Ballet. Best of all is the film’s incomparably intimate time spent with the dancers — among them Nicolas le Riche, Marie-Agnès Gillot, and Agnès Letestu — as they rehearse and refine the choreography of Mats Ek, Wayne McGregor, Rudolf Nureyev and Pina Bausch. For balletomanes and the merely curious as well, La Danse is — as is all of this great filmmaker’s work, regardless of subject — a transporting and ennobling experience, one which leaves us both entertained and forever changed in a myriad of subtle ways. (152 min.) "This is one of the finest dance films ever made." -A.O. Scott, The New York Times.
Detroit Film Theatre. |
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WORLD OPERA IN CINEMA: CARMEN
FEBRUARY 18-20
Every year, La Scala officially inaugurates its Opera Season with an opening night regarded as one of European society’s most important cultural events. This year, for the second time since the birth of Teatro alla Scala in 1778, thanks to the continuing collaboration of Emerging Pictures & RAI Trade, audiences in cinemas throughout the World will be able to experience this event. |
Young Georges Bizet, who died soon after the first run of Carmen, never enjoyed the success and fame of his creation. Carmen wasn’t initially well received, but became and still is one of the most famous and most popular works in the opera repertoire. For this production, La Scala has gathered the new generation of opera stars, including the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, the Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott, the Italian soprano Adriana Damata, and newest revelation Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, won the Leyla Gencer Voice Competition last year. Conductor: Daniel Barenboim
Detroit Institute of Art |
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LANDSCAPES FROM THE AGE OF IMPRESSIONISM:
FEBRUARY 6-APRIL 18
This exhibition includes many of the finest examples of mid-nineteenth through early twentieth-century French and American landscapes from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The 38 paintings presented offer a broad survey of landscape painting as practiced by such leading French artists as Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet and their most significant American followers including Frederick Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. |
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The exhibition includes many American painters who, beginning at mid-century, followed in the footsteps of the French archetypes seeking to improve their skills and find inspiration in Paris and its environs, attending French art academies and frequenting the painting locations made famous by their Barbizon and Impressionist predecessors. Some of the Americans had direct contact with leading French landscape painters, sharing landscape sites or seeking informal guidance from admired mentors. The majority of the American paintings on display depict American locales: beaches, factories, tenements, and notable subjects such as Central Park in works distinguished by brilliant colors and lively, broken brushwork. Includes works by William Glackens, Julian Alden Weir, and Willard Leroy Metcalf.
Flint Institute of Art. |
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LA DANSE: THE PARIS OPERA BALLET directed by Frederick Wiseman
OPENS FEBRUARY 19
Documentary master Frederick Wiseman’s 38th film in a career that has spanned more than that number of years, turns his attention to one of the world’s greatest ballet companies, the Paris Opera Ballet. |
John Davey’s camera roams the vast Palais Garnier, an opulent 19th century pile of a building: from its crystal chandelier-laden corridors to its labyrinthine underground chambers, from its light-filled rehearsal studios to its luxurious theater replete with 2,200 scarlet velvet seats and Marc Chagall ceiling. La Danse devotes most of its time to watching impossibly beautiful young men and women — among them Nicolas Le Riche, Marie-Agnès Gillot, and Agnès Letestu — rehearsing the choreography of Mats Ek, Wayne McGregor, Rudolf Nureyev and Pina Bausch. For balletomanes and the curious alike, La Danse serves up a scrumptious meal of delectable moments, one more glorious than the next, made even more precious by their ephemeral nature. (Fully subtitled).
The Urban Institute Contemporary Arts. |
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| FEBURARY 4-7: OF LANGUAGE AND LONGING, THE FILMS OF MARGUERITE DURAS |
Marguerite Duras, called “preposterous, self-obsessed, eloquent, unstoppable” (New York Times Review of Books), was one of the most widely read French writers of the postwar era. She authored 34 novels from 1943–1993, including her autobiographical L’Amant (The Lover), winner of France’s distinguished literary Prix Goncourt. She also penned the celebrated film Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Disliking others’ adaptations of her work, in the 1960s she began to direct—16 films in all. Her work is characterized by its self-reflexive nature; she often moved one story, or elements of a story, through genres: novel, film, play—even film to film. In her obituary, the New York Times lauded “her simple, terse writing style, as if language itself were merely a vehicle for conveying passion and desire, pain and despair.” These films by and about Duras were selected by Walker artist-in-residence Haegue Yang. Except where noted, all films are directed by Marguerite Duras.
Supported in part by the Cultural Services of the Consulate General of France in Chicago.
Walker Art Center |
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FROM PAGE TO STAGE
FEBRUARY 4 FROM 5 TO 7 PM
Marguerite Duras intended for her 1986 novella, The Malady of Death, to be translated to the stage; now Walker artist-in-residence Haegue Yang is developing it for a future theatrical production. At this roundtable conversation, Yang and local scholars talk about the process of adapting written text for the stage.
Walker Art Center |
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MARCUS STEINWEG ON DURAS THE PHILOSOPHER
FEBRUARY 7 AT 1 PM
Known for his writing on aesthetics, abstraction, and art as well as his collaborations with artists, Marcus Steinweg focuses on a reframing of the late French author Marguerite Duras as a philosopher rather than a writer or filmmaker. This lecture closes artist-in-residence Haegue Yang’s interrogation of Duras’ multidisciplinary oeuvre and threads connections between the author as a philosophical figure and Yang’s work. Walker Art Center. |
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| FILMS AT THE ALLIANCE FRANCAISE DE MINNEAPOLIS-SAINT PAUL |
GERVAISE
FEBRUARY 12
Gervaise Macquart, a young lame laundress, is left by her lover Auguste Lantier with two boys... She manages to make it, and a few years later she marries Coupeau, a roofer. After working very hard a few more years, she succeeds in buying her own laundry (her dream)... But Coupeau starts to drink after having fallen from a roof, and Lantier shows up... A faithful adaptation of Emile Zola's novel "L'Assomoir", depicting the fatal degeneration of a family of workers, mainly because of alcohol. |
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LE FILS D'EPICIER
FEBRUARY 26
Antoine Sforza, a thirty-year-old young man, left his village ten years before in order to start a new life in the big city, but now that his father, a traveling grocer, is in hospital after a stroke, he more or less reluctantly accepts to come back to replace him in his daily rounds. Back in the village, accompanied by Claire, a young woman he loves but who hesitates to commit herself, he does the job half-satisfactorily.On the other hand, the relationships are tense with his brother François and even worse with his father, who despises him. |
CINE-KIDS: LES TROIS MOUSQUETAIRES
FEBRUARY 21 AT 3 PM |
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FEBRUARY 14 & 15: THE ALLIANCE FRANCAISE DE KANSAS CITY WELCOMES
JEAN-LOUIS BRUGUIERE, International Judge and High Representative of the European Union in the United States for the Fight against Financing of Terrorism as part of the Terrorism Finance Tracking Program/SWIFT.
● Sunday, February 14 at 4:00pm: Conférence en français : "La Coopération Transatlantique dans la Lutte contre le Terrorisme" .
Information and additional related events. |
Jean-Louis Bruguière |
● Monday, February 15: 7:00pm: Lecture in English: "Transatlantic Cooperation in the Fight Against Terrorism: The French Perspective"
In Cooperation with International Relations Council of Kansas City and The Edward A. Smith/Bryan Cave Lecture Series of the School of Law at UMKC. Hors d'oeuvres reception immediately following the conference.
Location for both events: Courtroom, the UMKC School of Law - 5100 Oak Street, Kansas City.
Limited seating - Registration required: RSVP@afkc.org - Tél: 816-221-2049.
Complete information.
Mr. Bruguière's visit is made possible in part by the Délégation Générale de L'Alliance Française. |
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ST. LOUIS (MO)
FEBRUARY 24 & 25: PIERRE VIMONT, AMBASSADOR OF FRANCE TO THE UNITED STATES IN MISSOURI ON THE OCCASION OF THE SAINT LOUIS FRENCH FESTIVAL (FEB. 24-MARCH 1ST)
French Ambassador to the U.S Pierre VIMONT will be the guest speaker to the following events: |
Wednesday, February 24 at 7:00 p.m. Opening Event of the 2010 St. Louis French Festival : Lecture by His Excellency Pierre VIMONT "Franco-American Cooperation in the Middle East" (in English).
Presented by Alliance Française de St. Louis and Center for International Studies, University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Location: University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL, Millennium Student Center) - Lecture is Free - Open to the public - Reservation required: call 314-516-7299 or visit www.cfis-umsl.com and click Register. Complete information. |
Pierre VIMONT |
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Thursday, February 25, 12:00-Noon-1:30 p.m.: the Alliance Française de St. Louis invites you to a lunch with His Excellency Pierre VIMONT.
Keynote address on "Perspective on France and the United States Today" (in English).
The address will be emceed by Charlie Brennan, host of KMOX Radio's The Charlie Brennan Show. Limited seating reservation required.
Location: Saint Louis Club - 7701 Forsyth Blvd - Clayton, MO 63105.
Information and reservation.
The Saint Louis French Festival is founded by Cathedral Concerts.
Complete program. |
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THE HORSE SHOW
THROUGH MAY 29
The Horse Show is an exhibition of horse objects from the Sheldon's remarkable collection of sculpture as well as two-dimensional holdings and sculpture on loan from private local collections. Included will be Deborah Butterfield's Derby Horse, Marino Marini's Horseman, and Boris Lovet-Lorski's On Parade (Stallions). Two additional folk art pieces, our 19th-Century Horse (Shop Sign) by an unknown artisan and Carousel Horse (Bessie), also from Sheldon's permanent collection. On loan from private collectors for the exhibition in the Great Hall will be Niki de Saint Phalle's Le Cheval et la Mariee (The Horse and the Bride) and Five Horses—Side by Side by Immi C. Storrs as well as another Butterfield, Gus, and Jean Pierre Larocque's Untitled Horse III.
Sheldon Museum of Art. |
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AZUR & ASMAR directed by Michel Ocelot
FEBRUARY 6-18 |
Best of the New York International Children's Film Festival. A dazzling animated feature, AZUR & ASMAR is the story of two boys raised as brothers, who set off on a dangerous quest through faraway lands to find and free the Fairy of the Djinns, held captive in a crystal palace. A poetic, fairytale-like adventure that weaves together themes of family, race, and culture within a visual landscape of incomparable brilliance. Animation. NYICFF Kids Flix A kaleidoscopic collection of the best animated short films from around the world, featuring musical and narrative works from Sweden, France, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. A spectacular array of traditional, CGI, collage, and stop-motion animation styles.
Film Streams Cinema |
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35 RHUMS directed by Claire Denis
FEBRUARY 5-7 |
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Claire Denis’ exquisite, achingly tender and poignant new film is one of the most acclaimed movies of the year. On 12/6/09 it had an overall metacritic.com score of 94 out of 100, and critics have used words like “sublime” and “profound” to describe it. A radiant and loving tribute to the gentle domestic dramas of Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu (see Late Spring), the film tells of a widowed father who realizes that his beloved college-age daughter will soon leave him and live on her own, thus fracturing a family that is refreshingly functional by movie standards. “French art house cinema at its unpretentious best.” –Hollywood Reporter. Cleveland premiere. Presentation of this film supported by a generous grant from La Maison Française de Cleveland. |
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A SECRET (UN SECRET) directed by Claude Miller
FEBRUARY 7-8
Mathieu Amalric, Ludivine Sagnier, and Julie Depardieu star in the ravishingly photographed new film by veteran French helmer Claude Miller, one of the most acclaimed movies of 2008. Set in post-WWII Paris, the film focuses on a Jewish teenager who stumbles upon some skeletons in his family’s closet—transgressions that link them to the Holocaust. “A remarkable film with an unusual story.” –Boxoffice. French, Yiddish, and German with subtitles. 35mm. 105 min. |
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CASQUE D’OR directed by Jacques Becker
FEBRUARY 19-21
The French Crime Wave - this rarely shown Jacques Becker masterpiece was recently voted one of the 100 best movies of all time in a poll of French film critics and historians conducted by Cahiers du Cinéma magazine. A supremely sensual Simone Signoret plays “Golden Marie,” a gangster’s moll in 1898 Paris who lures an honest carpenter into her world of pimps, prostitutes, and petty crooks—with tragic results. “One of the most physically beautiful and sensuous films ever made.” –Leonard Maltin. |
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THE WILD CHILD ( L’ENFANT SAUVAGE) directed by François Truffaut
FEBRUARY 27-28
In one of his loveliest and most humane films, François Truffaut plays an 18th-century French scientist who takes in a feral boy found in the woods one day; he attempts to civilize and educate him. The movie addresses a host of issues and ideas: nature versus nurture, the individual versus society, Rousseau’s conception of the “noble savage.” Based on a true case from 1798. New 35mm print! Cleveland revival premiere. |
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THE WEDDING SONG (LE CHANT DES MARIÉES) directed by Karin Albou
FEBRUARY 6-7
In this sensuous and haunting new film set in Tunis in the early 1940s, two teenage girlfriends—one Jewish, one Muslim—compare their lives and prepare for their respective marriages. Then invading Nazis upset all their plans. From the director of La Petite Jérusalem. Adults only! “A bold, very carnal take on adolescent female bonding in a setting not often portrayed onscreen.” |
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THE CLOCKMAKER / THE WATCHMAKER OF ST PAUL (L’HORLOGER DE ST PAUL) directed by Bertrand Tavernier
FEBRUARY 21 AT 5:30 PM
The French Crime Wave - Philippe Noiret plays a lonely Lyons watchmaker who re-examines his life when a police inspector informs him that his son is wanted for the murder of a factory owner. Bertrand Tavernier’s acclaimed directorial debut is based on a novel by Georges Simenon. With Jean Rochefort. 35mm color print from France! |
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SIX IN PARIS (PARIS VU PAR…) directed by various directors
FEBRUARY 19-20
Six French New Wave filmmakers—including Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, and Jean Rouch—each tell a story set in a different district of Paris in this classic omnibus film that was shot in 16mm, in liberating cinéma-vérité style. Godard (working with Albert Maysles) visualizes an anecdote from his feature A Woman Is a Woman. Rohmer amuses with a vignette about a salesman who fears he has murdered a tramp. But Chabrol steals the show with his darkly comic account of an endlessly-bickering bourgeois couple (played by Chabrol and his then-wife Stéphane Audran) who drive their child to distraction. Cleveland revival premiere. |
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RIPTIDE aka SUCH A PRETTY LITTLE BEACH (UNE SI JOLIE PETITE PLAGE) directed by Yves Allégret
FEBRUARY 26-27
The French Crime Wave - A melancholy young man (Gérard Philipe) checks into an off-season hotel on the Normandy coast. What has brought him to this desolate place in the dead of winter, amid gloom and rain? And who is that other mysterious guest at the hotel who seems to know a lot about the young man? Time Out New York called this moody, poetic film noir “the biggest revelation” of Film Forum’s “French Crime Wave” series. It’s not distributed in the U.S., so don’t miss this 35mm print from France! |
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NAPOLÉON directed by Abel Gance
FEBRUARY 28 AT 7 PM
Never released in America on DVD (who’d want to watch it on TV anyway?), Abel Gance’s monumental re-creation of the rise of Napoléon is one of the most thrilling silent films ever made. It overflows with technical innovations—and climaxes in a three-panel (originally three-screen) “triptych.” Our plans to show this movie last August were scotched when Universal Pictures’ sole 35mm copy was destroyed in a catastrophic studio fire. Fortunately, they recently replaced it with a new print. Napoléon exists worldwide in copies of various lengths; we will show the American release version of Kevin Brownlow’s color-tinted and toned 1980 restoration, which has music by Carmine Coppola (Francis’ father). A road-show sensation in the early 1980s, it has rarely been revived since. Unmissable! |
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LA VÉRITÉ (THE TRUTH) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
FEBRUARY 26 AT 8:40 PM
Thursday, February 26, at 8:40 pm &
The French Crime Wave - Brigitte Bardot delivers her best performance in this rarity from the director of Diabolique and The Wages of Fear. She plays Dominique, a modern, uninhibited young woman on trial for the murder of her sister’s fiancé (he was also Dominique’s lover). Flashbacks re-create the events that led to this tragedy, and in time it becomes apparent that what’s really on trial is Dominique’s carefree, liberated, “immoral” lifestyle—a threat to the established social order. 35mm print from the Sony Pictures studio archive! |
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CYPRIEN GAILLARD: DISQUIETING LANDSCAPES
JANUARY 30 - APRIL 11, 2010
The modernist tower block, with all its varied associations has been a recurring motif in this young French artist’s seductive and haunting films and photographs. Gaillard (b. 1980), who lives and works in Paris, is keenly aware that these buildings occupy an ambiguous place in the European and North American collective conscious. |
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They recall the utopian ideals associated with modern architecture in the early 20th century and are visual markers of modernization. But they are also connected with sprawling postwar development and, especially in Eastern Europe, can suggest the monolithic authority of Soviet regimes. Many of the vast low-income housing complexes that were built in this form during the postwar years turned into failed social experiments. Some have been purposely dismantled in spectacularly staged demolitions. In Disquieting Landscapes, organized by Senior Curator of Exhibitions Catharina Manchanda, you encounter photographs and film/video works made in the last five years that swerve between documentary observation and extraordinary theatricality. Gaillard often creates associative connections between ancient monuments and contemporary buildings and the aesthetic spaces they define. The artist draws subtle parallels between ancient monuments whose original uses can be shrouded in mystery and contemporary structures whose approaching obsolescence will eventually conceal their own purposes. Where others might simply see eyesores, Gaillard reimagines modernist tower blocks as monuments, ruins, stage sets, and sculptures.
Wexner Center for the Arts. |
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A TOWN CALLED PANIC directed by Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar
FEBRUARY 12-25
Hilarious and frequently surreal, the stop-motion extravaganza A Town Called Panic has endless charms and raucous laughs for children from eight to eighty. Based on an animated Belgian cult-TV series (which was released by Wallace & Gromit’s Aardman Studios), Panic stars three plastic toys named Cowboy, Indian, and Horse who share a rambling house in a rural town that never fails to attract the weirdest events. |
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As Nicolas Rapold’s Film Comment review notes, the filmmakers draw on the topical but loopy humor that enlivens both Chuck Jones’s classic Looney Tunes cartoons and the more recent Wallace & Gromit series. Kids and parents alike loved this delight during the Wexner Center’s Zoom: Family Film Festival.
Gateway Film Center |
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LA DANSE - THE PARIS OPERA BALLET directed by Frederick Wiseman
FEBRUARY 6 AT 7 PM
Legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman, subject of a 2006 Wexner Center visiting filmmaker retrospective, examines one of the world’s greatest ballet companies. A noted chronicler of American institutions, Wiseman here explores the all the aspects of administering the Paris Opera Ballet—including an extensive look at the vast Palais Garnier, Marc Chagall ceiling and all—focusing on the engrossing rehearsals for and performances of seven ballets. |
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DOUBLE FEATURE FOOD BEWARE: THE FRENCH ORGANIC REVOLUTION directed by Jean-Paul Jaud and BABETTE'S FEAST directed by Gabriel Axel
FEBRUARY 25 AT 7 PM
Part of Field & Screen: Films about Our Food - The French know food. In tonight’s films they use that savoir faire to give children a safer meal, and in a touching, Oscar-winning drama, remind two elderly sisters that it’s OK to live a little.
In Food Beware, the mayor of a small French village resolves to make the school’s lunch menu organic as a response to growing concerns over the use of pesticides and other agribusiness practices. Incorporating the testimony of farmers, politicians, health-care workers, and parents, the film explores the notion that our food may be responsible for a general rise in cancer rates, infertility, and other health problems. (112 mins., video)
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In Babette’s Feast, the aging daughters of a Danish minister rekindle their appreciation for life’s simple pleasures with a spectacular feast prepared by their Parisian housekeeper. Winner of an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, it’s the perfect reminder of the pleasures brought to us all by lovingly prepared food. (102 mins., 35mm). Complete information. |
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35 SHOTS OF RUM directed by Claire Denis
FEBRUARY 19 - MARCH 4 |
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One of the best-reviewed films of 2009 returns to Columbus for this special engagement! Claire Denis, known for her subtle, fluid, and intriguing movies, is clearly among the greatest filmmakers of our time. She sets this story in a Paris suburb, where a widowed metro conductor, approaching retirement, lives with his beautiful grown daughter—the object of a neighbor’s romantic interest. The man’s former girlfriend also lives in their building and plays a role in their closely knit lives. 35 Shots of Rum considers the mysterious complexities that surround evolving relationships, whether romantic or parental. This is the rare movie whose plot is driven both by what people say and what they hold back, the meaningful pauses between words, a significant glance, a sexy outfit, a thoughtful gift. It’s a film that holds a mirror up to life as it is actually led. |
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TINARIWEN
FEBRUARY 16 AT 8 PM
Tinariwen, whose name translates as "empty places," have won fans worldwide with the droning guitar grooves and politically charged lyrics of their desert blues. The group, which last played here in 2004, represent the Touareg people, exiled Berber wanderers of the south Sahara whose rebel identity is expressed in songs that describe this disenfranchised people’s expulsion from Algeria, repression in Mali, and cry for self-determination. |
Their edgy music is charged with raw energy, and Pitchfork described Imidiwan: Companions, their most recent CD, as "a celebration of a return to the desert and of the people who live there, a communal album with lots of big choral vocals and time set aside for breathtaking flights on the guitar" and concluded: "There is a unique magic to the sounds of the Sahara. Imidiwan captures that magic with skillful grace."
Wexner Center for the Arts. |
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HARD TARGETS
THROUGH APRIL 11 |
Wexner Center Galleries This exhibition takes on sports and masculinity as its central themes in a collection of some 70 thought-provoking artworks created over the past 25 years by 21 different artists. French artist Philippe Parreno will be one of the artist featured in the show. In Hard Targets, varied treatments of masculinity get a turn in the spotlight. Hard Targets seeks to revise and complicate our time-honored stereotypes of male athletes and athleticism (as aggressive, heterosexual, hypercompetitive, and remote) by presenting alternative, possibly more democratic, interpretations of subjects frequently revealed to us only in authorized and frankly commercial images. The artists in the show instead investigate sports and masculine identity through topics ranging from biology to business to celebrity, played out in locker rooms, stadiums, and advertising campaigns.
Wexner Center for the Arts - Complete information. |
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CONSUMING CLAY: PORCELAIN WARES FROM THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTRUIES
THROUGH JULY 10 |
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Value, whether monetary or sentimental, actual or perceived, is not static and can be determined by a complex range of variables. Connected to social and class status, porcelain wares from the 18th and 19th centuries were once tangible signifiers of wealth, position and power in Western Europe and the United States. Tables were piled with lavish settings of hand-decorated, fine porcelain—an ostentatious practice that related to ceremony, consumption, ritual and cultural identity. Emphasizing the relationship between consumer practices and luxury goods, Consuming Clay features historical tableware and decorative objects from premier Western European manufacturers such as Sèvres, Meissen, Höchst and Belleek, as well as Chinese export ware.
Art Museum – Miami University - Gallery 3 |
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WHISTLER: INFLUENCES, FRIENDS AND THE NOT-SO-FRIENDLY
FEBRUARY 26-MAY 30
Featuring works on paper from the Toledo Museum of Art’s renowned collection, the exhibition highlights the talents of the iconic American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), positioning his work within the context of his contemporaries, influences, friends, and enemies. |
As a printmaker, Whistler was a leading personality among all modern etchers. His name is often linked with Rembrandt’s as the most experimental, accomplished, and refined masters of the etched line. In addition to more than 60 prints by Whistler, works by Felix Braquemond, Henri Fantin-Latour, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, Charles Émile Jacque, Alphonse Legros, Charles Meryon, and Joseph Pennell will be exhibited. IMAGE: James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903) Nocturne. Lithotint, 1878. Museum purchase, 1923.75.
The Toledo Museum of Art - Works on Paper Galleries |
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"SACRED WATERS: INDIA'S GREAT KUMBHA MELA PILGRIMAGE"
FEBRUARY 5 - MARCH 27
OPENING RECEPTION FEBRUARY 18 FROM 4:30-7:30 PM
The exhibit, by French photojournalist Jean-Marc Giboux, features more than 40 dramatic photographs from the Kumbha Mela, a mass Hindu pilgrimage that takes place every three years at one of four sacred locations in India. Millions of Hindu worshippers participate, traveling to Prayag, Hardwar, Ujjain or Nasik to bathe in the sacred waters of the Ganges. It is the largest human gathering in the world, yet few outside of India are familiar with it. Complete information.
H.F. Johnson Gallery - Carthage College
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SPATIAL CITY: THE ARCHITECTURE OF IDEALISM
OPENING: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2010, 6-9 pm
FEBRUARY 5 - APRIL 18, 2010 |
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Spatial City, the first exhibition in the United States of artwork drawn from France’s network of Regional Contemporary Art Funds (Frac), brings together an international, multi-generational array of contemporary artists whose work contends with utopian thinking and the idealism and cynicism it inspires. Spatial City will travel to Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center (May 23-August 8, 2010) and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit - MOCAD (September 10-December 26, 2010). |
If idealism can be seen as having a structure—an architecture, because it is a made thing--we can imagine it as a more or less dialectical engine moving between poles of optimism and cynicism. While the theoretical architecture of Yona Friedman (b. 1923), particularly his “utopia realizable,” was the inspiration for the show’s framework, architecture informs this art exhibition not as a practice but as a way of regarding the world. Artists in the exhibition are responding to the complex problems of postwar society: the failed utopian social experiments that resulted in the dehumanizing conditions of Brutalist architecture, the rise and fall of totalitarian states, the tensions resulting from post-colonial immigration, and the destruction of the environment in the name of progress.
Spatial City : An Architecture of Idealism, is supported in part by Culturesfrance-French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication (Délégation aux Arts Plastiques), the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and the UWM School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Institute of Visual Arts (Inova) - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Article PREVIEW: 'Spatial City' at Inova - By Mary Louise Schumacher, Art and architecture critic of the Journal Sentinel. February 3, 2010.
“Spatial City,” a sweeping new exhibit that opens Friday at Inova, gives credence to what has been largely out of fashion in the modern and contemporary art world for about a generation: unabashed idealism. It is an ambitious and difficult show inspired by the utopian architecture of Yona Friedman, a younger, European counterpart to Buckminster Fuller. It also is the first U.S. show drawn from the collections of the Fonds Régionaux d'Art Contemporain, or the FRAC, a network of contemporary art centers in France...(Read) |
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The thirteenth festival celebrates the diversity of French-language cinema, contemporary and classic, and France's multicultural society. Nine of the thirteen films are Milwaukee Premieres.
The Festival opens with Dialogue avec mon jardinier (Conversations with my Gardener) a beautiful ode to nature and friendship never released commercially in the U.S.
All films are in French and other languages w/English Subtitles. Talkbacks follow certain screenings. All films are free unless otherwise noted.
This program is made possible in part with the generous support of French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. Complete information and list of sponsors - Schedule. |
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THE BALD SOPRANO and THE LESSON by Eugene Ionesco
Directed by Jennifer Chapman
DECEMBER 3-5 & 9-12 at 7:30 p.m.
DECEMBER 6 at 1:30 p.m.
Often called the father of the Theater of the Absurd, Eugène Ionesco wrote groundbreaking plays that are simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound.
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Now his classic one acts The Bald Soprano and The Lesson are available in an exciting new translation by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tina Howe, noted heir of Ionesco’s absurdist vision, acclaimed by Frank Rich as “one of the smartest playwrights we have.” In The Bald Soprano Ionesco throws together a cast of characters including the quintessential British middle-class family the Smiths, their guests the Martins, their maid Mary, and a fire chief determined to extinguish all fires — including their hearths. It’s an archetypical absurdist tale and Ionesco displays his profound take on the problems inherent in modern communication. The Lesson illustrates Ionesco’s comic genius, where insanity and farce collide as a professor becomes increasingly frustrated with his hapless student, and the student with his mad teacher.
Kjer Theatre - University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. |
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