Category: Culture

Options dwindle for postponed Cannes Film Festival

Cannes
Official Cannes 2018 Poster

 

The Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday abandoned plans for a postponed 2020 edition in June or July, but said it will still explore other options

The Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday abandoned plans for a postponed 2020 edition in June or July but declined to give up entirely, saying it will explore other options.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday extended France’s national lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, banning all public events until mid-July. That essentially dashed the hopes of Cannes organizers who last month said they would aim to move the annual May event a month or two.

“It is clearly difficult to assume that the Festival de Cannes could be held this year in its original form,” the festival said in a statement.

The film industry is increasingly expecting Cannes, the world’s largest film festival and movie market, will be canceled. But the festival on Tuesday said it’s still examining other possibilities that might allow Cannes to carry on in some fashion [ . . . ]

Continue at WASHINGTON POST: Options dwindle for postponed Cannes Film Festival – The Washington Post

Benedictine nuns release Gregorian chants to help ease coronavirus isolation

French order opens abbey doors to allow what could be the largest recording project ever

A monastery of Benedictine nuns living in seclusion in southern France has opened its doors to allow recordings of its Gregorian chants to be made available to the outside world.

In what is believed to be the largest recording project ever conducted, the US musician John Anderson followed the 45-strong order for three years. He installed microphones in the abbey church of Notre-Dame de Fidélité de Jouques near Aix-en-Provence in southern France and captured the nuns singing their eight daily “offices”. The result is thousands of chants, the entire Gregorian repertoire, about 7,000 hours long. Continue reading “Benedictine nuns release Gregorian chants to help ease coronavirus isolation” →

Radio, companion of confined life, sees its audiences explode

With long-term confinement, the antennas adjust their grids to meet the demands of listeners

Thursday April 9, Médiamétrie will publish, as every quarter, the audience figures for French radio. With a week in advance and, due to the epidemic, different calculation methods, the field surveys having, for safety reasons, been suspended Monday March 16. Even without the usual analysis tools, these figures should bear witness to the explosion of hearings since the start of confinement. This is already notable in other surveys.

The Alliance for press and media figures (ACPM) reported on Monday April 6 that online radio listening had increased by 15% on average in France over the first two weeks of confinement – the information radios recording an increase of 40%.

The peak morning audience has shifted: 9 a.m., instead of 8 a.m.

Listening habits have also changed: a study carried out for Europe 1 by Kantar Profiles, Monday April 6, on 1,027 respondents in France, underlines that 44% of French people say they get up later since the start of confinement. The peak morning audience has shifted: 9 a.m., instead of 8 a.m., says Etienne Marut, marketing director for Europe 1. He also underlines a very strong increase in visits to the antenna site: 35 million in March, an increase of 125%.

Same story on the side of France Inter, whose site saw its audience grow by 111% in March. “At the time of the attacks, we already had a feeling that radio was the medium of the crisis ,” explains Erwann Gaucher, digital director of France Inter, even if the period was fortunately too short to draw conclusions from it. There, after a month, the numerical figures are still very high. “

Excitement of exchanges

Free time also strengthens the interaction between the radio and its listeners. “In February, says Erwann Gaucher, there were 800,000 interactions (comments and likes) on our Facebook page, in March: 1.4 million.” [ . . . ]

Continue reading at LE MONDE: Radio, companion of confined life, sees its audiences explode