Category: Culture

Discover the winners of the Time Out 2016 Love Paris Awards

The results are in! Discover Paris’s best-loved restaurants, cafés, bars, boutiques and cultural centres in each of the 20 arrondissements.

Over the last eight weeks, Parisians have nominated, and then voted for their favourite bars, restaurants, shops and cultural centres in each arrondissement. 7000 nominations and 12,000 votes were cast to decide on the Love Paris Awards winners.

 

The 2016 hall of fame reflects the richness, diversity and energy of Parisian life. Among them, there are the capital’s staples, the unmissable addresses of the city, such as the bar Piano Vache in the hills of Sainte-Geneviève, the Menilmontant bookshop le Monte-en-l’air, the 3rd arrondissement’s hidden cocktail bar Candelaria and even the famous Japanese Higuma in the 1st. La Recyclerie, the bar Les Chaises or the Shakespeare & Company have once again triumphed for 2016, winning the best place in their arrondissement for another year.
We’ve also discovered plenty of new spots in the winners, like quai de la Râpée’s Social Bar, beer-brewing workshop Brew Unique or Animal Kitchen, Point Ephémère’s resident kitchen. […]

Read Full Story: Discover the winners of the Time Out 2016 Love Paris Awards

Jim Jarmusch: ‘I shy away from sex in my films. It makes me nervous’ 

After almost 40 years in cinema, the director remains the quintessential leftfield auteur. He discusses how his gentle new film Paterson offers a Zen alternative to blockbuster chaos

There’s a line in Jim Jarmusch’s 1986 film Down By Law that seems apposite in November 2016. It goes: “My mama used to say that America’s the big melting pot. You bring it to a boil and all the scum rises to the top.”

Over tea in a Paris hotel, Jarmusch considers whether he’d agree. “Kind of appropriate, but also kind of cynical,” he says finally. “But it’s a scary and sad time with these creeps coming to the top. I think we all have to be vigilant around the world now with Brexit, and Marine Le Pen in France. There’s a lot of scary shit, you know?”

There’s a line in Jim Jarmusch’s 1986 film Down By Law that seems apposite in November 2016. It goes: “My mama used to say that America’s the big melting pot. You bring it to a boil and all the scum rises to the top.”Over tea in a Paris hotel, Jarmusch considers whether he’d agree. “Kind of appropriate, but also kind of cynical,” he says finally. “But it’s a scary and sad time with these creeps coming to the top. I think we all have to be vigilant around the world now with Brexit, and Marine Le Pen in France. There’s a lot of scary shit, you know?”

Source: Jim Jarmusch: ‘I shy away from sex in my films. It makes me nervous’ | Film | The Guardian

French secularism: Anti-religious or safeguarding freedoms?

This week we take a closer look at France’s cherished state secularism. Laïcité [secularism], a product of French history and philosophy, is central to how France defines itself. But critics say it is anti-religious and increasingly used to stigmatise Muslims. Is laïcité compatible with a multicultural society?

We spoke to Jean-Louis Bianco, the President of the National Observatory on Secularism, to find out more. […]

Full Story: French secularism: Anti-religious or safeguarding freedoms? – France 24

 

Charotte Gainsbourg and Degas

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“I loved this exhibition. It was Degas’s monotypes – a very interesting process of printing – mostly of women, prostitutes, who were willing to pose for him. But it could become very abstract, with the repetition; he was interested not in the drawing as a result but in the accumulation in his work of the same subject. It was very modern for his time. Then you have the other part – it’s very hard when you know that someone was such a horrible person in real life, and such an antisemite. It’s hard to avoid thinking about it and focus on the art. It’s the same with so many other people, like Céline. But it was really worth going.”
– Charlotte Gainsborg / A Strange New Beauty at MoMA.

Photograph: Andrew Toth/Getty

Ballet Scene (1879) pastel | moredegas_balletscene

Charlotte Gainsbourgcharlotte

Chanson Du Jour: Viens Sur la Montagne

Chanson Du Jour 11/21/2014: Marie Laforêt “Viens sur la montagne”

Marie Laforêt  was very popular entertainer in France during the 1960s  and 1970s. Like many European actresses of her day, she also recorded music. As a singer, Laforêt broke somewhat from the whispery style of Hardy and Birkin, and although she had hardly a great voice, it was one well suited to the folk and traditional songs she recorded in her early career.

Laforêt also had pretty good taste in music, recording the beautiful Peruvian traditional song El Condor Pasa four years before Simon & Garfunkel’s version.

The spiritual/protest song “Go Tell it On the Mountain” (“Viens Sur la Montagne) is the first track of this 1964 album by the same name.

Laforêt was not a recorder-playing, clog-dancing folkie. She recorded a nice version of the Stone’s “Paint It Black” in 1966, and acted in over 25 films, including Fucking Fernard in 1987.

She may be the only performer to record “El Condor Pasa” and appear in Fucking Fernard, but I will check with Paul Simon to confirm.