Tuesday, March 25, 6 pm
Conference - "Writing in French, Originating Elsewhere"
by Bernard Magnier (In French)
Alliance Française de Washington
2142 Wyoming Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20008
Admission: $12
Information and reservation at www.francedc.org
The last four French-language writers to receive and accept the Nobel Prize in literature were writers born outside mainland France. This talk intends to provide an inventory of these writers, to follow in their footsteps through the books they’ve written, and to show the pragmatic, loving, conflicting and passionate relationship these writers, who have « come from elsewhere, » have with the French language.
Bernard Magnier is one of the most brilliant specialists currently at work on African literature. Journalist by profession, he has worked for several years with Radio France International and is director of French publisher Acte Sud’s imprint « Afrique ».
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Monday, March 31, 6:30 pm - CANCELLED -
Conference - "French: The Other Global Language"
by Julie Barlow (In English)
Organized in collaboration with the Quebec Government Office and
the Délégation Générale de l’Alliance Française, USA.
Alliance Française de Washington
2142 Wyoming Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20008
Admission: $12
Information and reservation at www.francedc.org
Commentators across the planet seem convinced the French language is on the decline. Au contraire, say the authors of The Story of French: more people speak and are learning French today than ever in the history of the language. French today is showing vitality that surprises even francophones. But will French speakers be up to the coming challenges?
Julie Barlow, a journalist since 1995, is an award-winning contributor to Canada’s main French language magazine, L’actualité. With her husband and colleague, Jean-Benoît Nadeau, she published a study of the French, Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong. Both a critical and public success, it has sold more than 200,000 copies in English, French, Dutch and Chinese. The couple’s new book, The Story of French, was published in the fall of 2006.
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Saturday, April 5, 2 and 4 pm
Eustache Retrospective (Film)
National Gallery of Art
Large auditorium, East Bldg.
4th St. & Constitution Ave., NW - Washington, DC
Admission: Free
More information: 202-737-4215
Le cochon (The Pig)
France - 1970 - 50mn. - b&w
The pig is a documentary shot in one day, with two cameras. Eustache films the entire process of slaughtering a pig.
Le Jardin des délices de Jérome Bosch
(Hieronymous Bosch's Garden of Delights)
France - 1979 - 34mn. - color
An amateur of Jérôme Bosch tells his friends about his personal experience of the "Jardin des délices". He describes seemingly very strange scenes with simple words.
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Sunday, April 6, 4:30 pm
Eustache Retrospective (Film)
National Gallery of Art
Large auditorium, East Bldg.
4th St. & Constitution Ave., NW - Washington, DC
Admission: Free
More information: 202-737-4215
Une sale histoire (A Dirty Story)
France - 1977 - 50mn. - color
During the filmed, scripted segment, a group of friends listens as one man tells a story about a time when, in a small café, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. His friends ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. During the documentary segment narrated by Jean-Noël Picq, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.
Les Photos d'Alix
(Alix Pictures)
France - 1980 - 18mn. - color
One of Eustache's friends, Alix Clio-Roubaud, comments on pictures she has made, but the link between what she describes and what we see become more and more perplexing.
Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus
(Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes)
France - 1966 - 47mn. - b&w
Daniel is poor. He would like to buy a duffle coat to be fashionable and to charm the girls. He finally finds a job as Santa Claus, which allows him to earn money and at the same time to seduce women.
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Sunday, April 6, 3 pm
Max & Co (Film)
La Maison Française,
4101 Reservoir Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
More information at www.la-maison-francaise.org
Admission: $5
France – 2008 – 76 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Samuel Guillaume, Frederic Guillaume
Cast: Lorant Deutsch, Sanseverino, Virginie Efira
Filmmakers Frédéric and Samuel Guillaume team up to direct this charming tale of a 15-year-old who sets out to find his long-lost father and instead stumbles into an adventure of a lifetime. Max's father was a famous troubadour named Johnny Bigoude who disappeared shortly after his boy was born. Now Max is a teenager who is known to the locals as something of a travelling musician himself, and he's determined to find out what became of his old man.
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Wednesday, April 9, 6 pm
Charlotte Marin: And I Cook Too (Concert)
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Millenium Stage
2700 F Street, NW Washington, DC 20566
Author, composer and performer, Charlotte Marin uses her writing talent to showcase a brand of female humor that is delicious, to say the least. From cooking to more or less involuntary celibacy, from secrets among girlfriends to shopping madness, she chronicles the universe of the single woman in finely polished pieces, veering between mockery and sensitivity. On stage, she slips in interludes between each song like a glamorous red thread that ties together the one-woman show. Recommended for all women who like to laugh and for all men who think they understand women.
"Bridget Jones’s little sister, with a direct, female style. Charlotte Marin is a keen practitioner of self-deprecation... Recommended for boys, to help enlighten them about what girls are really thinking."– Le Point - Student Supplement
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Friday, April 11, 7:30 pm
Charlotte Marin: And I Cook Too (Concert)
La Maison Française
4101 Reservoir Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
More information at www.la-maison-francaise.org
Author, composer and performer, Charlotte Marin uses her writing talent to showcase a brand of female humor that is delicious, to say the least. From cooking to more or less involuntary celibacy, from secrets among girlfriends to shopping madness, she chronicles the universe of the single woman in finely polished pieces, veering between mockery and sensitivity. On stage, she slips in interludes between each song like a glamorous red thread that ties together the one-woman show. Recommended for all women who like to laugh and for all men who think they understand women.
"Urgently recommended to all women who like to laugh and to all men to think they understand women!" - www.evene.fr - April 4, 2007.
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Saturday, April 12, 2 pm
Eustache Retrospective (Film)
National Gallery of Art
Large auditorium, East Bldg.
4th St. & Constitution Ave., NW - Washington, DC
Admission: Free
More information: 202-737-4215
La maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore)
France - 1973 - 220mn. - b&w
This marathon drama focuses on three twentys-something Parisians in a bizarre love triangle: Alexandre Jean-Pierre Léaud is a seemingly unemployed narcissist involved with both a live-in girlfriend Bernadette Lafont and a Polish nurse Françoise Lebrun whom he picked up at a café and with whom he begins a desultory affair. Clocking in at over 3½ hours, the movie focuses less on plot than on the confused and ambivalent interrelations of these three lost souls.
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Sunday, April 13, 4:30 pm
Eustache Retrospective (Film)
National Gallery of Art
Large auditorium, East Bldg.
4th St. & Constitution Ave., NW - Washington, DC
Admission: Free
More information: 202-737-4215
Numéro zéro (Number Zero)
France - 1971 - 110mn. - b&w
Eustache's grandmother confides her souvenirs in front of her grandson's camera.
La peine perdue de Jean Eustache
(The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache)
France - 1998 - 53mn. - color
This film is a tribute to Jean Eustache, a little-know great French filmmaker, now deceased. Through places, words, images and sounds, this film draws the director's portrait and brings his work back to life for a second.
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Monday, April 14, 7 pm
Eustache Retrospective (Film)
La Maison Française
4101 Reservoir Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
Admission: $5
Reservation required.
Du côté de Robinson (Les mauvaises fréquentations)
(Bad Company)
France - 1964 - 40mn. - b&w
Two men in their twenties spend their time in Parisian cafés trying to pick up women. They take one girl dancing, and then steal her purse when she prefers to dance with another man.
La rosière de Pessac
(The Young Virtuous Girl of Pessac)
France - 1968 - 65mn. - b&w
In a little town in southern France, Eustache films a pageant election which awards a virtuous and deserving young girl.
La rosière de 1979
(The Young Virtuous Girl of Pessac 1979)
France - 1979 - 67mn. - color
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Monday, April 21, 6:30 pm
Eustache Retrospective (Film)
La Maison Française
4101 Reservoir Road, NW Washington, DC 20007
Admission: $5
Reservation required.
Mes petites amoureuses (My Little Lovers)
France - 1974 - 123mn. - color
Daniel lives with his grandmother in a beautiful, quiet corner of "douce France". He seems carefree, but serious, as is so often the case during the troubled phase of adolescence. His mother, who lives in Narbonne, comes to see him with her companion, José, who is a farmer. Daniel realizes that his mother has decided to take him back. He rejoins the couple in their little apartment in Narbonne, and is made an apprentice to Henry, José’s brother, who has a cycle workshop. He encounters freedom, loneliness, the working world, and friends. He also experiences love for the first time...
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