Culturethèque
From the latest book award to the next French gig in your area, stay in touch with bits of France in the UK.
for the latest updates on Culturethèque
++ follow us on twitter
++ join us on facebook
++ join our mailing list
email us: culturetheque@ambafrance.org.uk
Tags
Sartre online
I'll just go straight ahead and tell you what I found. The star content is the BBC documentary.
Read on for my links.
Les Autres Gens
Rosalie Blum is a very gentle little graphic novel, and, thanks to my job on Culturethèque, and our renewal of the graphic novel section, discovered that the author of Rosalie Blum, Camille Jourdy, contributed to this graphic novel collective.
Shakespeare vs. Molière
In the boxing ring this week: Shakespeare vs. Molière
Grab your moleskine notebooks and jump inside the time machine - c'est parti!
Last Days to wish you a 2012 Happy New Year!
Wishing you all the best for the New Year!
Success, happiness and new cultural discoveries and re-discoveries on our digital platform.
Culturethèque.
Academic Earth: another reason to love the internet.
Did you apply to Yale, get in, but then realise the course fees were $40 000/ year above your budget? Even if you didn't, you may be interested to hear about Academic Earth., a kind of online lecture hall, where you can attend any lecture series at any time.
Here's a link to a Yale course on the History of France since 1871.
Their wikipedia page.
Fixing clocks in tunnels
The Parisian underground has sewers, dead people, a metro, and, being Parisian, artists. I read about this when I was at school in the early 2000s in Paris. A friend sent me an article from Wired magazine on the topic, though I should add that this is by no means "new."
Adieu Camarades!
A friend worked on a documentary for Arte, about how people experienced the end of Communist rule.
It is free, online, on the arte website.
Here is the link to the first episode of six, of Adieu Camarades (in French, for the moment).
Les Guignols de l'Info
I watched a lot of bad TV when I was at school. I'd watch sitcoms about pre-teens, and my dad would catch me and say, oh that looks really challenging. But then at 19h30 he would reclaim the television set to watch Les Guignols de l'Info, France's version of Spitting Image. There are a lot of bad things on French TV, but the brief window when all of France has access to the paying Canal + channel supplies among the best shows.
Two favourites: Les Guignols de l'Info, and Zapping, a medley of TV clips cut in a way to highlight television's idiocy. The only downside of watching these shows on the Canal+ website is you have to sit through an advert before every show.
Film review : A Trick of the Light
La Nuit Americaine [Francois Truffaut, 1973]
Not only did this film-within-a-film almost certainly influence Irma Vep (see Intermission), but it could well be Truffaut’s most ingenious work…
La Nuit Americaine refers to the cinematographic trick of simultaneously under-exposing and avoiding sky so that nighttime scenes can be shot during the day. Hence the film’s US and UK distribution title, Day for Night.
Here we have a film review reposted from Paul Scott's blog.
Look smart, watch French films with the second edition of my French films festival!
Last year, we blogged about this online exclusive event organized by Unifrance and Allociné (see here).
For those who didn't read the post, let's explain briefly what My French Films Festival is.
Online airwaves for French expats but not only!
Have you heard of French Radio London (FRL)?
The slogan speaks for itself: “The French Voice in London”.
FRL is known as the French expats' radio but fortunately it is also aimed at anyone with an interest in French culture.
It covers various subjects from daily news to sports, to art, health and music.
Boris Vian at the BNF
Boris Vian enjoyed little recognition in his lifetime (1920-1959). He was discovered posthumously when Jean-Jacques Pauvert republished « L’Écume des jours » in 1963. This forever young fascinating man, who imagined a new language and created a rich and diverse imaginary world, was made a legend. Jazz, theater plays, prose, poetry, translations, songs, paintings... The exhibition presents the various facets of Boris Vian’s work to highlight its unity and richness.
Blogs about French films
Four blogs that talk about French films (among others):
Left-field cinema: "not film criticism, it's film recommendation and analysis"
Cellophane tears: from a film fan who is "trying to watch at least two films a week "
World Cinema: pretty thorough in the number of films it touches on, but not a lot of depth.
Criterion: does a lot of analysis. It's not so much a blog, as a shop, but this essay by good ol' Slavoj is entertaining.
Bref
Launched 8 years ago, the show Le Grand Journal gradually became the flagship on Canal +, especially among 18 to 35 year olds.
Oxford's e-resources: The Ashmolean
Oxford gets money for interesting stuff. There are probably reasons why the town seems to have a bigger interesting-stuff budget than say, Wittersham, but I'm not going to go into them.
This is the first in a series of blogposts on how that money is put to use.
The Ashmolean museum was recently refurbished (and when they were rebuilding, some sneaky undergrads would break in and climb up onto the roof, for one of the best night views around).
The Ashmolean has updated their website too, with lots of works viewable online. Here's something French. Click on the image for higher resolution.
Literal Translations of French Idioms and Phrases
I make white cabbage when it comes to idiomatic expressions. As a binational, I frequently sound like I'm from nowhere, and I have other cats to whip than to go around memorising ridiculous phrases, then dig into my head trying to remember them.
I don't have the memory of an elephant, but I do have wikipedia links to French idioms with their meaning and direct translation, or a more complete list with their equivalents in English.
Ten French Canadian Short Films
TV5 is currently lending out ten shorts for free. You need to sign up to the website, but I just did that, and it is no hassle. You then borrow the films for forty-eight hours.
Tailored Texts
Nicolas (the author of this post) sent me a link to this fledgling website, Tailored Texts.
The idea is this: foreign language public domain texts are uploaded and commented on by the Tailored Texts community - user-generated lit crit, essentially, with handy translations. It is still quite small - the most discussed work is Voltaire's Candide with 2329 entries, that means 2329 little annotations to the text, and one user has submitted 2300 - but it looks like the beginning of something that could revolutionise literary commentary and the study of literary texts. The lay-out is not super enticing, but it uses wikis so it is maleable and suits its purpose.
Camille is playing at the Hackney Empire tonight
Songs from Camille's first two albums were among my University staple listening tracks, back in the day when I had this iPod. I had just left Paris, so this song was relevant. Now that I have an office job (sort of), I find the line in this song very apt: "C'est quand même triste d'être vissée sur sa chaise à mon âge, comme une vieille anglaise."
Anyhow, she has brought out a new album, and tonight she's playing in London at the Hackney Empire.
This is Camille's website, this is a six minute video of the time I interviewed her, and here is her Culturethèque page.
French Philosophers in Jest
Are you a little bit lazy, yet interested in having a quick recap on what French philosophers philosophise about? Today, I came across this website, and picked out the pages on Frenchies Camus, Sartre, Rousseau and
Foucault. My main reaction to most of the entries was "pfff - ha - pfff."
1 User Comment Sign up or Log in to add a comment.
Zekria Ibrahimi | Fri 03 Feb, 17:01
J'ai vu Sartre parler, et c' etait comme si je voyais son revenant a l'ordinateur, c' etait tres etrange. Sartre etait un philosophe qui parlait pour les pauvres. Aujourd' hui, les philosophes ne sont pas engages comme lui. Le Sartre moderne ne vive pas...