For when you have a free evening in Paris...

It happens I work a few minutes away from one of the last classified art houses, or cinema d’art et d’essai, of the 13th arrondissement : the Escurial panoramique on the Boulevard Port Royal near the Gobelins avenue – founded at the turn of the XXth century, known simply at the time as the “Royal”. Both a blessing and a curse, its tantalizing proximity offers an inescapable alternative every night I wait for a bus, having long abandoned the race to meet the earlier bus pulling away just as I near the stop… With barely ten minutes to spare, my mind and eventually legs wander straight to the small theatre, long the property of French director Jean Gourget and thankfully protected from a sell-out by a group of renegade cinephiles in the 80’s. Clueless regarding business but propelled by a zealous appetite for film, they devoted entire nights to inconic screen legends and saturated the weeks with film projections, thus multiplying attendance and subsequently expanding the theatre in order to accommodate larger crowds. Refurbished, cozy and with but a mildly decadent feel, the theatre split into two projection rooms what used to be the main floor and balcony. Eventually they sold the cinema to an art movie society in 1987.

Bursting with red and lined with velours, one purchases a ticket in this place almost expecting a magician’s performance. Perhaps inspired by the slightly baroque environment, the first film I chose to view was hardly a French classic, but rather an American whimsical delight : Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox. I won’t delve into the dazzling theatrics of an American animation on this blog, however the film had Guignolesque quality, panache and a French retro flavour reminiscent at times of Sylvain Chomet’s imagination, perfect to suit the stylish theatre hosting the projection. Interesting too, that Anderson spends half his year in Paris…

Blog post written by Isabelle, our Blog editor in Paris
Brought to you by Focus on French Cinema

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For when you have a free evening in Paris...

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