As Ambassador Gérard Chesnel so accurately declared, “the French Spring in Manila has (indeed) evolved from an arts festival into a cultural season.”
It’s an event that cultural aficionados look forward to every year. And the French Embassy never disappoints.
Just when we thought we had seen the best of France in the previous French Spring in Manila, the French embassy came up with another enthralling repertoire of fashion, music, dance, food, movies and theater in French Spring in Manila 2006 or FSM ‘06.
Last year , with theme “United in Diversity”, we were fascinated by the exquisite pineapple fabrics exhibit at the Ayala Museum, a joint collaboration of textile designer Elodie Brunet and the weavers of Rurungan sa Tubod Foundation in Palawan.
This year, echoing the theme, “Sama-Sama” (All Together) , Ayala Museum went haute couture with the 63-piece Christian Lacroix creations that are actually pieces of art. Titled “Dialogues!, a conversation between designer, artist and viewer,” Yves Sabourin, curator of the exhibit, said, “This is a display where everything is mixed together, where inspiration and influences are released, where distance allows understanding of the creation process.”
The exhibit opened April 1 and will run up to May 4.
On May 25 and 27 (8 p.m.) violinist Nemanja Radulovic and pianist Dominique Plancade will perform at the Philamlife Auditorium. On June 2 and 3, La Baraka Dance Company, one of the outstanding French companies in contemporary dance, will perform choreographer Abou Lagraa’s famous creation “Allegoria Stanza”.
“Allegoria Stanza” has been described as a “constantly renewing wave.”. It conjures images of the sea, people awakening; then the sky becoming dark and people getting angry. The rain comes, then the sky calms down and man faces his own image.
Alliance Francaise on 209 Nicanor Garcia st., Bel-Air 2, is presenting three exhibits: Etchings and Lithographs of 10 French artists; “Regards Croises” , Parisian daily life through the camera of Filipino photographer Juan Caguicla; and “Clowns without Borders”, photos by Caguicla and two other Filipino lensmen, Chris Severino and Richard Guzman, of a group of 450 French professional artists who perform voluntarily all over the world for young victims of crisis.
The Zanzibar Circus, a learning place in Valence that helps children- victims of sexual abuse reintegrate into society, will hold three weeks of artistic exchange in July at the Chamelon, a non-stock, not profit organization founded by Laurence Ligier in Iloilo in 1997.
What’s a French festival without French movies? It will open on June 9 at the Shangri-la-Plaza cinema with “Motorbike Race” and will last up to June 18.
This one should not be missed: “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett will be presented in Filipino under the direction of visiting Alain Timar.
Originally written in French (En Attendant Godot) in 1948, “Waiting for Godot” has been produced worldwide. Theater regulars remember a Tagalog adaptation of it by the late Lino Brocka.
Filipinos, worn-out by the current political stalemate, might see themselves through the characters and situations in Beckett’s tragic- comedy about two men who wait for someone they do not even know but who seems to hold their future in his hands, yet never comes.
“Waiting for Godot” will be at the Cultural Center Little Theater on June 23 (8 p.m.), June 24 (3 p.m. and 8 p.m.), June 25 (3 p.m.).
For more information about FSM’06, call up 857-69-20 or visit www.frenchspringinmanila.com.
ellen
we just don’t get it. too many projects
sponsored by foreign countries and their
embassies had benefited a few in Metro
Manila. The presentation and propagation of
the ARTS should not be taken only for
their entertainment value but also to
find means to enrich our own, to make the
ARTS the remaining uncorrupted (I hope) part of our culture, dynamic and serving the aesthetic interests of our people.
too many ARTS program by foreigners, it is
not NOTHING but so FEW are being done by us,
by our thieving government, by our struggling
artists. THAT FRENCH sponsored happening
should also be happening in our Metro
Cities of Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, Cotabato,
Zanboanga. We need the ARTS also in Baguio.
It is probably too much to ask that we need
to do something, so we can elevate the
sophistication of our people, to be learned
and knowledgeble beyond caregiving, domestic
helping, ship and toilet cleaners overseas.
ARE OUR EMBASSIES ABROAD DOING THE SAME TO
THE LOCAL CITIZENS? NOPE, NOPE. THERE IS NO BUDGET TO SELL OUR ARTS AND CULTURE ABROAD. WE HAVE OF COURSE THE BAYANIHAN AND INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS. OUR THIEVES HONOR THEM WHEN THEY COME HOME. THERE IS BUDGET OF $10,000.00 (more than half a million pesos)per month to rent a millionaire’s condo for a mere CONSUL in NEW YORK.
No, I correct myself, it is not us, or our
artists who doN’t get it. THE THIEVES AMONG
US JUST DON’T GET IT.
ellen
I provoke for a response to correct
me and put me in my proper corner. so
far only a. de brux took the time to
enlighten me.
but i must continue to provoke, who
knows some people born to it, raised
by it and will die fighting for it,
might eventually get it.
Some of our embassies abroad try. But as usual the problem is budet, budget, budget. And you know where the people’s money go.