Thursday, October 11, 2012 (15)

Oct 11, 2012
September 6, 2012
Thursday
  • ThinkFrench

  • Sep 6, 2012 at 2:00pm to Oct 29, 2012 at 5:00pm
  • Location: Think Coffee meeting room
  • Description:


    Whether you are looking to start learning French, brush up on your skills, or take an advanced conversation class, ThinkFrench might be just what you need. The teachers at ThinkFrench are both university professors and native speakers, with over ten years of practice teaching French as a second language. Our classes offer a truly unique learning experience - each 8 week session gives you access to a private blog that has been specifically designed to help you master contemporary French, the kind of French that is being spoken on the streets of Paris today. The first 8 week sessions for levels 1, 2 and 3 are starting in early September. A few spots remain open at the moment. 
    Please visit our blog for more details : 

    http://www.thinkfrenchnyc.blogspot.com/

    We look forward to hearing from you. À très bientôt.

    The ThinkFrench team. 

  • Created by: ThinkFrench
September 13, 2012
Thursday
  • “So You Think You Can Dabkeh” Festival Celebrating the Folk Dance of the Levant

  • Sep 13, 2012 to Oct 13, 2012
  • Location: Alwan for the Arts
  • Description:

    Alwan for the Arts, New York’s leader in promoting the diverse culture and arts of the Middle East, presents So You Think You Can Dabkeh, a series exploring the traditional and popular line dances of the Levant region of the Middle East. Through participatory and performance events in Manhattan and Brooklyn from September 8 - October 13, 2012, Alwan will celebrate one of the most publicly performed and beloved traditional dances of Arab Americans. The events are open to the public and funded in part by NYSCA.

  • Created by: Alwan for the Arts
September 20, 2012
Thursday
  • 17 GIRLS

  • Sep 20, 2012 to Oct 26, 2012
  • Location: Lincoln Plaza Cinema
  • Description:

    17 GIRLS (Cannes Film Festival International’s Critics Week selection), is Delphine and Muriel Coulin’s provocative debut feature focusing on a group of bored teenage girls who all make an irrevocable pact, a story inspired by a true headline-grabbing case which took place in Massachusetts.

    When Camille (Louise Grinberg, The Class) accidentally becomes pregnant, she encourages her friends and fellow high-school classmates to follow suit, so they can raise their children collectively, an act at once unexpected and incomprehensible.  It’s only a matter of time, before seventeen girls in the high school are pregnant and the town is thrown into a world of chaos.  Set in the writer-directors’ small, seaside hometown of Lorient in Brittany, 17 GIRLS is a reflection on adolescence, body image, friendship and the perplexing realities of growing up.

    Prior to 17 GIRLS, Delphine (also a novelist) and Muriel Coulin (a documentary director) directed five award-winning short films together. Louise Gr

  • Created by: Aimee Morris
October 2, 2012
Tuesday
  • NYFF50: CINÉASTES/CINEMA OF OUR TIME

  • Oct 2, 2012 to Oct 14, 2012
  • Location: Film Society of Lincoln Center
  • Description:

    Ticket Info | Membership Offer | Follow the Film Society

    André S. Labarthe in person for select screenings on 10/3 and 10/4!

    In 1964, film critic and filmmaker André S. Labarthe, together with Janine Bazin, widow of influential film theorist André Bazin, approached the French television channel ORTF about starting a program that would resemble the long, in-depth interviews with film directors that magazines such as Cahiers du cinéma and Positif regularly published. ORTF gave the green light, and Cinéastes de notre temps (Filmmakers of Our Time) was born. Many of the programs were dedicated to older directors, then in retirement or in the final stages of their careers. Instead of TV journalists, Labarthe and Bazin would often ask well-known film directors to make these programs: thus, Jacques Rivette on Jean Renoir, or Jacques Rozier on Jean Vigo.

    Cinéastes de notre temps lasted until 1971, when ORTF, for various clear and unclear reasons, decided to terminate production. Over the follo

  • Created by: Nathalie Charles
 
  • Francine leClercq: "Narcissus"

  • Oct 2, 2012 at 8:00am to Oct 27, 2012 at 2:00pm
  • Location: SOHO20 CHELSEA Gallery
  • Description:

    The painted Narcissus, attributed to Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ca 1599, will be the focal image of french artist Francine LeClercq's installation, whereas the erring gaze of Narcissus, the visual echo reverberating between the illusionistic picture plane and the actual gallery setting, the existential reciprocity between the subject and object, form and content, …, are parallel notions and traits that LeClercq uses to investigate the modern context and premise within which a work may be produced, placed and perceived. 

    ----------------------

    Narcissus, la nouvelle exposition de l'artiste française Francine LeClercq est à découvrir du 4 au 27 Octobre à la gallerie Soho20 à Chelsea. Cette installation tourne autour de l'oeuvre "Narcissus" attribuée à Caravaggio.

    For preview and images, please visit: http://francineleclercq.blogspot.com/

    For further information, please contact Jenn Dierdorf at info@soho20gallery.com

    3439525129?profile=original

  • Created by: Francine LeClercq
October 11, 2012
Thursday
  • Journée du français dans les organisations internationales (JFOI)

  • Oct 11, 2012 to Oct 12, 2012
  • Location: Toutes les organisations internationales du monde (et autour)
  • Description:

    Vendredi 12 Octobre 2012, alors que les chefs d’État des 75 pays membres et membres observateurs de l’OIF se réuniront au Sommet de Kinshasa  pour définir les grandes orientations politiques de la Francophonie, des fonctionnaires  des Organisations internationales (OI) s’évertueront  à parler français et à initier, dans leur environnement professionnel; des activités relatives aux valeurs de la Francophonie. Cette initiative, qui se veut ludique,  sera  l’occasion de souligner l’importance des  diversités linguistiques, culturelles et conceptuelles dans le fonctionnement des OI.

    Bien que concentré sur les institutions multilatérales, l’événement  offre à tous la possibilité de participer aux activités  diplomatiques, médiatiques et culturelles préparatoires. Les personnes intéressées  peuvent s’inscrire sur le site de l’Assemblée des francophones fonctionnaires des organisations internationales (AFFOI).

    Pour en savoir plus : http://www.affoi.org/JFOI.php

  • Created by: virginie de saint phalle
 
  • THE BIG PICTURE

  • Oct 11, 2012 to Nov 16, 2012
  • Location: Lincoln Plaza Cinema and IFC Center
  • Description:

    MPI Pictures is proud to announce the release of THE BIG PICTURE, Eric Lartigau’s French thriller adapted from Douglas Kennedy’s American novel, starring Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Heartbreaker,) Marina Foïs, Neils Arestrup and Catherine Deneuve.  THE BIG PICTURE is scheduled to open in New York at Lincoln Plaza Cinema and IFC Center on Friday, October 12.

    Paul Exben (Romain Duris in an intense perfomance) is a handsome and successful thirty-something Parisian corporate lawyer with a beautiful wife, two children, and a glimmering future as a partner in the firm he co-owns with his mentor, Anne (Catherine Deneuve.) But behind this deceptively perfect bourgeois façade lies a desire for creative fulfillment, a restless spirit who despises his conformist life and envies the freedom of his neighbor Greg (Eric Ruf,) an uncompromising photojournalist.

    Greg’s unexpected death throws Paul’s life into chaos, and he makes a startling decision that pushes him into unknown territor

  • Created by: Aimee Morris
 
  • Literature and History: Writing World War II in France

  • Oct 11, 2012 from 8:00am to 10:00am
  • Location: East Gallery, Buell Hall at Columbia University
  • Description:

    Roundtable discussion with Laurent Binet, Henry Rousso, Philip Watts and others

    Writer Laurent Binet was awarded the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman for his first novel, HHhH, an acronym for Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich (Himmler's brain is called Heydrich). The historical novel is about the rise and fall of Reinhard Heydrich, the infamous Nazi called "the man with the iron heart"  by Hitler. Just released, his newest book Rien ne se passe comme prévu, is about French President François Hollande.

    Henry Rousso is a French historian and specialist of World War II, whose seminal works include The Vichy Syndrome; he is a Director of Research with the CNRS.  

    Philip Watts is Professor of French at Columbia and author of Allegories of the Purge: How Literature Responded to the Postwar Trials of Writers and Intellectuals in France.

  • Created by: Columbia Maison Francaise
 
  • NYFF50 || "Passion" by Brian De Palma

  • Oct 11, 2012 from 11:15am to 1:15pm
  • Location: Film Society of Lincoln Center (to be determined)
  • Description:

    Passion

    Brian De Palma, 2012
    USA/France | English | Format: DCP | 100 minutes

    Brian De Palma exhibits great panache and a diabolical mastery of frequent, small surprises in his cinematically most ingenious movie since his magical comedy-of-coincidences, Femme Fatale. With tongue planted in cheek, or maybe not—it’s up to you to decide—De Palma turns French director Alain Corneau’s 2010 Love Crime into a droll, erotic tale of female competition. Noomi Rapace more than matches her performance in the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as the assistant to an unscrupulous advertising honcho (Rachel McAdams), who steals her ideas and acts as if it’s all good sport. It’s great fun until De Palma zeros in on the fury in Rapace’s eyes. The De Palma trademarks are all present and deployed with coolly calculated abandon: a brilliant use of split screen; a confusion of identical twins; dreams within dreams; and shoes to die for.

    Series: NYFF50: Main Slate

    Venue: Walter Reade Theater, Alice Tul

  • Created by: Nathalie Charles
 
  • NYFF50 || "Holy Motors" by Leos Carax

  • Oct 11, 2012 from 2:00pm to 4:00pm
  • Location: Film Society of Lincoln Center
  • Description:

    Holy Motors

    Leos Carax, 2012
    France | French with English subtitles | Format: DCP | 115 minutes

    This unclassifiable, expansive movie from Leos Carax (Lovers on the Bridge)—his first feature in 13 years—operates on the exhilarating logic of dreams and emotions. After a prologue in which Carax himself, clad in pajamas, walks through a corridor that leads to a theater full of silent spectators, Holy Motors segues to actor Denis Lavant, Carax’s longtime collaborator, playing a mysterious man named Oscar who inhabits 11 different characters over the course of a single day. This shape-shifter is shuttled from appointment to appointment in Paris in a white-stretch limo driven by the soignée Edith Scob (Eyes Without a Face); not on the itinerary is an unplanned reunion with Kylie Minogue. To summarize the film any further would be to take away some of its magic; the most accurate précis comes from its own creator, who aptly described Holy Motors after its world premiere in Cannes as “a film a

  • Created by: Nathalie Charles
 
  • NYFF50 || "Kinshasa Kids" by Marc-Henri Wajnberg

  • Oct 11, 2012 from 2:15pm to 4:15pm
  • Location: Film Society of Lincoln Center (to be determined)
  • Description:

    Kinshasa Kids

    Marc-Henri Wajnberg, 2012
    Belgium/France | Lingala and French with English Subtitles | Format: DCP | 85 minutes

    Perhaps the most ebullient “musical” you’ll see this year, Marc-Henri Wajnberg’s singular documentary/fiction hybrid follows a group of street kids—kicked out of their homes for being “witch children”—in the titular Congolese capital. These ever-resourceful youngsters decide to form a band and team up with Bebson, an eccentric impresario and one-time recording star; he’s just one of many unforgettable adults who, whether as informal instructors, fellow musicians, or menacing pursuers, impact the lives of these indefatigable tykes. Completely devoid of sentimentality and condescension, Kinshasa Kids celebrates and honors both the resilience of its young protagonists and the chaotic city in which they live.

    Series: NYFF50: Main Slate

    Venue: Walter Reade Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center

     
  • Created by: Nathalie Charles
 
  • La soif du monde (A Thirsty World)

  • Oct 11, 2012 from 2:30pm to 5:30pm
  • Location: East Gallery, Buell Hall at Columbia University
  • Description:

    A documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, directed by Thierry Piantanida and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire (2012, 90 min.), Blu Ray format

    In this film, famed French photographer and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand looks at one of the major challenges to human survival: water. Filmed in some 20 countries, the film reveals the mysterious and fascinating world of fresh water through spectacular aerial images shot in regions difficult to reach and rarely filmed.

  • Created by: Columbia Maison Francaise
 
  • NYFF50 || "The Gatekeepers" by Dror Moreh

  • Oct 11, 2012 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm
  • Location: Film Society of Lincoln Center (to be determined)
  • Description:

    The Gatekeepers

    Shomerei Ha’saf | Dror Moreh, 2012
    Israel/France/Germany | Hebrew and English with English subtitles | Format: DCP | 97 minutes

    Since its stunning military victory in 1967, Israel has hoped to transform its battlefield success into the basis for long-lasting peace. Simply put, this hasn’t happened: 45 years later, violence continues unabated while the mistrust between both sides increases daily. In what can only be called an historic achievement, filmmaker Dror Moreh has brought together six former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s Secret Service, who reflect on their successes and failures to maintain security while responding to the shifting politics and imperatives of the “peace process.” Each man weighs in on topics ranging from preemptive strikes to confronting terrorists both Palestinian and Israeli; their thoughts and responses are candid, well-informed and rarely short of remarkable. An insider’s guide—and what insiders!—to five decades of Israeli history, The G

  • Created by: Nathalie Charles