French Cinema, A State Affair: History of Cinema and Public Policies from WWII to the Digital Age Columbia Maison Française 2015-03-31 | March 5, 2015, a discussion with Frédérique Bredin, Pierre-Emmanuel Lecerf, Laurent Creton and Jonathan Buchsbaum, moderated by James Schamus.Could the classic films of Truffaut, Godard or, more recently, Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) have existed without the generous forms of support provided to the French film industry? Many countries have been inspired by France’s public policies in the filmmaking industry. Sometimes critiqued as protectionist, these policies, introduced after World War II, allowed France to become the first European hub of film production and exportation, and one of the leading world powers in the industry. How has the French system evolved since the end of World War II? What relationships has it had with the American model? Between the laws of the market and cultural diversity, are the French and American strategies in the digital age as antagonistic as we think?Frédérique Bredin is President and Pierre-Emmanuel Lecerf is Director of International Affairs at the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC). Laurent Creton is a historian, President of the Conseil Académique and Vice-President of the Commission de la Recherche at Paris III. Jonathan Buchsbaum is Professor of Media Studies, CUNY Graduate Center. James Schamus is Professor of Professional Practice in Film, Columbia School of the Arts.Support provided by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.Timeline:Frédérique Bredin: 04:50Jonathan Buchsbaum: 21:02Laurent Creton: 39:22Pierre-Emmanuel Lecerf: 1:00:42James Schamus: 1:11:18Q&A: 1:18:00
The Blindsided: How Berlin and Paris Cleared the Way for Russia Columbia Maison Française 2024-05-08 | On February 24, 2022, Russia blindsided most of Europe with its all-out invasion of Ukraine. This forced an overdue reckoning for Europeans on the failures of their Russia policy and the realities of Vladimir Putin’s agenda. In particular, France and Germany had been hoodwinked by promises of cheap Russian energy supplies, as well as the pipe dream of a common European security architecture with Moscow. In Sylvie Kauffmann’s new book Les Aveuglés: Comment Berlin et Paris ont laissé la voie libre à la Russie (The Blindsided: How Berlin and Paris Cleared the Way for Russia), she asks how and when France and Germany could have acted differently and changed the path of history. At what point was it clear that Putin was heading down this path? And why did Europeans, again and again, ignore the warning signs? Will Europe emerge more unified or more divided by this war that has opened its eyes?Sylvie Kauffmann is a foreign affairs columnist for the French newspaper Le Monde. She also contributes to the opinion pages of the Financial Times and has been a contributing writer for the New York Times. She was the editor-in-chief of Le Monde in 2010-2011. She joined the newspaper in 1987 as Moscow correspondent. Since then, she has been Eastern and Central Europe correspondent, U.S. correspondent based in Washington D.C., New York Bureau Chief, and reporter-at-large in Asia, based in Singapore. Prior to joining Le Monde, Sylvie Kauffmann worked for Agence France-Presse as a foreign correspondent, in London, New Caledonia (South Pacific), Warsaw, and Moscow. Sylvie Kauffmann is the author of Les Aveuglés: Comment Paris et Berlin ont ouvert la voie à la Russie (2023), a book about France, Germany and Putin’s Russia.Alexander Stille is a journalist and author who has written extensively on Italian subjects, among other topics. He has written extensively for a wide range of American publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic and the New York Review of Books as well as La Repubblica in Italy. His most recent book is on a decidedly un-Italian subject: The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune. It tells the story of a psychoanalytic institute in New York that evolved into an urban commune and devolved into a cult.Event organized by the Columbia Maison Française and co-sponsored by Le Monde, and Columbia Global Centers | Paris.
Colonizations: Our History Columbia Maison Française 2024-04-24 | Colonisations: Notre histoire offers a sweeping view of 500 years of French colonial history, with articles contributed by more than 250 researchers from across the world. This collective project reflects the many changes in the historical understanding of colonization in the past 30 years. It underlines the diversity and complexity of colonial situations in Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, and inscribes French colonial history within French history and the history of the world. Edited under the direction of Pierre Singaravélou, Colonisations: Notre histoire was released in Fall 2023 by Le Seuil.Panelists include the following contributors to this book:Pierre Singaravélou, French Global historian who is a British Academy Global Professor of History at King’s College London. He is also full Professor of Modern History at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and director of the Center for Asian History at the Sorbonne. Mamadou Diouf, Leitner Family Professor of African Studies and Director of Columbia University's Institute for African Studies.Youssef Ben Ismail, Mellon Teaching Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University.Madina Thiam, Assistant Professor of History at NYU.Audrey Celestine, Associate Professor of History at NYU.Gregory Mann, Professor of History at Columbia.Guillaume Calafat, Assistant Professor of History at Panthéon Sorbonne.Emmanuelle Saada, Professor of History and French and Chair of the Department of French at Columbia. This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Francaise, Alliance Program, Department of History, and The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities.
Visual Investigation in Journalism: Which Images Should We Trust? Columbia Maison Française 2024-04-24 | A Discussion with Asia Balluffier, Pooja Chaudhuri, and Santiago Lyon, moderated by Mounir IbrahimOften portrayed as a threat to truthful information, the international circulation of images through social media has also become a valuable resource for investigative journalism. During ongoing wars and conflicts, image analysis, satellite pictures, geolocation, and videos taken by civilians and militaries allow journalists to complement field reporting with a technical approach. Far from breaking news speed, footage analysis takes many hours of work before reconstructing a detailed timeline of events and breaking down official claims. In explanatory videos, visual investigation units show their reporting process and the facts discovered. Could this be a partial answer to misinformation and mistrust in the media? Increasingly, international newsrooms are investing in this type of reporting. In 2017, the New York Times created its Visual Investigation unit and won four Pulitzer prizes since then. Two years later, Le Monde founded its unit, initially to report on alleged police violence during the 2019 protests. Since then, the unit has worked on Uighurs' treatment by the Chinese government, Russian mercenaries, hospital bombings in the Gaza Strip, and many other subjects. This panel examines visual investigation in journalism today: what counts as evidence, and how can it be used in news reporting? French and American journalists will explore how newsrooms find ways to use new technologies and analyze visual evidence to inform their reporting.
How Can We Talk about Humanism Today? Columbia Maison Française 2024-04-17 | Ali Benmakhlouf, in conversation with Madeleine DobieStarting from an anthropological reading of Montaigne, Ali Benmakhlouf considers the way Montaigne speaks to us of others - Amerindians, Turks, Africans - and not of the Other. Diversity without alterity, but rather a single humanity: conceiving and judging make humanity a single species. The humanity of others is that of all those who, in their own way, have resisted slavery, forced conversion, colonialism and the Inquisition. By rejecting the concepts of "savage," "primitive" and "barbarian," Montaigne honors the common sense of all, a common sense that is always at work, sometimes stifled by dictatorships, colonizations and hegemonic powers, but never annihilated. It lies at the heart of every act of resistance, in other words, of every act of freedom.Ali Benmakhlouf is Professor at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (Morocco), and Director of the Center for African Studies. He is a member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco and of the National Academy of Pharmacy. Author of numerous works on the philosophy of logic, classical Arab philosophy and medical ethics.Madeleine Dobie is Professor of French at Columbia. Her research interests include Francophone/postcolonial literature, colonial history, and 18th-century culture. She is the author of Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in 18th-Century French Culture and co-author of Relire Mayotte Capécia: une femme des Antilles dans l'espace colonial français (with Myriam Cottias).
Tears of History: The Rise of Political Antisemitism in the US Columbia Maison Française 2024-04-17 | Pierre Birnbaum, in conversation with Ira Katznelson and Rebecca Kobrin, moderated by Emmanuel KattanPierre Birnbaum will talk about his book, recently translated by Columbia University Press as Tears of History: The Rise of Political Antisemitism in the United States. He will be joined by Ira Katznelson and Rebecca Kobrin to discuss the book and compare political anti-semitism in the U.S. to the experience of other countries, including France. Pierre Birnbaum is a historian and political sociologist who is professor emeritus at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University, and Deputy Director, Columbia World Projects.Rebecca Kobrin is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History, in Columbia University’s Department of History.This event is co-sponsored by the Maison Française, the Alliance Program, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, and the Department of History.
Africa in the Time of the World Columbia Maison Française 2024-03-27 | In his new book, L’Afrique dans le temps du monde, historian Mamadou Diouf examines the impact of African historians on the field of history at the turning point when Africa achieved independence from colonial rule. African history asserted the value and importance of a past that had been depreciated under Western imperialism, while also decentering history through the use of libraries such as the Islamic Library and the study of the “Black Atlantic,” a term first coined by British sociologist Paul Gilroy to refer to that hybrid historical reality. This concept aimed to “reinstate Africa to its pioneering role in world history” according to Diouf: “For Africa and the Black diaspora, taking its history into its own hands meant reclaiming cultural, creative, and historiographic parity, and decoupling the concept of the universal from Occidental imperialism.” Mamadou Diouf examines the different currents and schools of African history (those of Dakar, Ibadan, Dar-es-Salaam) and important figures that shaped African historiography, such as Cheikh Anta Diop, and evokes some of its main controversies and debates.Mamadou Diouf is the Leitner Family Professor of African Studies. His research interests include urban, political, social and intellectual history in colonial and postcolonial Africa. His publications include Tolerance, Democracy, and Sufis in Senegal (ed. 2013), New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, and Power (with Mara A. Leichtman, 2009), and La Construction de l’Etat au Sénégal (with M. C. Diop & D. Cruise O’Brien, 2002), among others.Manthia Diawara is Professor in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at NYU. He has published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia.Emmanuelle Saada is Professor of History and French and Chair of the Department of French at Columbia
An artificial history of natural intelligence Columbia Maison Française 2024-03-26 | David Bates, in conversation with Stefanos Geroulanos and Joanna StalnakerWe imagine that we are both in control of and controlled by our bodies—autonomous and yet automatic. This entanglement, according to David W. Bates, emerged in the seventeenth century when humans first built and compared themselves with machines. Reading varied thinkers from Descartes to Kant to Turing, Bates reveals how time and time again technological developments offered new ways to imagine how the body’s automaticity worked alongside the mind’s autonomy. Tracing these evolving lines of thought, David Bates discusses his new book, An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence, which offers a new theorization of the human as a being that is dependent on technology and produces itself as an artificial automaton without a natural, outside origin.David Bates is Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California Berkeley. His research focuses on the history of legal and political ideas, and the relationship between technology, science, and the history of human cognition.Stefanos Geroulanos is the Director of the Remarque Institute and Professor of European Intellectual History at NYU. He usually writes about concepts that weave together modern understandings of time, the human, and the body. His new book is a history of the concepts, images, and sciences of human origins since 1770, forthcoming from Liveright Press as The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins in 2024Joanna Stalnaker is Professor of French at Columbia. She works on Enlightenment philosophy and literature, with a recent interest in how women shaped the Enlightenment. Her new book, The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death, will be published by Yale University Press in the Walpole series.
The Worlds of Slavery - Cécile Vidal Columbia Maison Française 2024-03-05 | Cécile Vidal will present the main contributions of the field-defining book she co-directed and co-edited Les Mondes de l'esclavage.Thursday, February 1Maison Française East Gallery, Buell HallThe Worlds of Slavery Cécile Vidal will present the main contributions of the field-defining book she co-directed and co-edited Les Mondes de l'esclavage: Une histoire comparée (Seuil, 2021). She will show how thinking about the worlds of slavery in the longue durée changes our understanding of slavery in the Americas and especially in the French Empire. Cécile Vidal is a social historian of colonial empires, the slave trade, and slavery in the Atlantic world from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. She is Professor of History at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is currently a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, where she is working on a new research project about suicide, the slave trade, and slavery in the French and British Atlantics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Maison Française Recap : September/ October 2023 Columbia Maison Française 2023-11-20 | Thank you to everyone who came and participated in our multiple events!Special thanks to : Marina Chiche @marina_chicheIsolde PludermacherEmmelyn Butterfield-RosenBernard HarcourtAmandine Gay @OrpheoNegraJoyce McMillan @JMacForFamiliesCécile Canut @hobecanutJulia DoeJulliard415 @JuilliardSchoolAlain KassandaDavid Ernaux-Briot @FilmsTotemLeah DeVun @DevunLeahMarianne HirschLeo SpitzerAlice Zeniter @AliceZeniterEtienne BalibarSouleymane Bachir DiagneLydia LiuBruno BosteelsMarie NDiayeMohamed Mbougar Sarr @mohamed_mbougarsarr Villa Albertine @villa_albertine @FilmsontheGreen @albertinebooksAlliance Program French Department Columbia @columbia
A Conversation in French with Marie NDiaye and Sylvie Kandé Columbia Maison Française 2023-11-16 | Marie NDiaye will join in conversation with Sylvie Kandé about her book Vengeance is MineMarie NDiaye will join in conversation with Sylvie Kandé about her book Vengeance is Mine, recently translated into English (from the French title La Vengeance m’appartient), and about other books in her remarkable oeuvre.Marie NDiaye was born in Pithiviers, France in 1967. Born to a French mother and Senegalese father, NDiaye studied linguistics at the Sorbonne and started writing when she was thirteen. She was just eighteen when her first novel, Quant au riche avenir, was published by the highly esteemed Editions de Minuit. Legend has it that immediately after reading her manuscript, Jérôme Lindon, the heroic publisher of Minuit, went straight to Marie NDiaye’s high school to wait for her at the door with a book contract in hand. NDiaye’s impressive debut was heard throughout the French literary scene. Marie NDiaye has since dedicated herself to writing and built one of the most singular yet powerful oeuvres of contemporary French literature.In 2001, she was awarded the prestigious Prix Femina literary prize for her novel Rosie Carpe (Bison Books, 2004), and in 2009, she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for Three Strong Women (Knopf, 2012). The latter was an International Booker Prize finalist. Marie NDiaye has also published Self-portrait in Green (Two Lines Press, 2014) and All My Friends (Two Lines Press, 2013). She is also the recipient of the Gold Medal in the Arts from the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts. NDiaye’s recent book, La Vengeance m’appartient, is coming out in English translation as Vengence is Mine (Penguin Random House).Sylvie Kandé is the author of three collections of poetry published by Gallimard. She was awarded the Prix Louise Labé de poésie for Gestuaire in 2017. Trained as both a literary critic and a historian, she is also known for her work on the complex conversations that have taken place between Africa and Europe and Africa and its Diasporas. Her areas of specialization include métissage/hybridity and post-racial utopias. She teaches at SUNY Old Westbury.This event is presented by the Columbia Maison Française with support from Villa Albertine.
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr in conversation with Souleymane Bachir Diagne Columbia Maison Française 2023-11-16 | Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and Souleymane Bachir Diagne talk about writing and their perspective on the role of literature in our lives.Mohamed Mbougar Sarr joins us for a personal conversation with Souleymane Bachir Diagne about his writing and his perspective on the role of literature in our lives.Mohamed Mbougar Sarr was born in Dakar, Senegal, in 1990. He studied literature and philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Brotherhood, his first novel, won the Grand Prix du Roman Métis, the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, and the French Voices Grand Prize, in Alexia Trigo’s translation. He was named Chevalier of the National Order of Merit by the president of Senegal. Sarr became the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to be awarded France’s oldest and most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for his novel The Most Secret Memory of Men (La plus secrète mémoire des hommes) in 2021. That book, a gripping literary mystery and coming-of-age novel, unravels the fascinating life of a maligned Black author, based on Yambo Ouologuem. It has been widely acclaimed as a “magnificent novel that also offers a profound reflection on the resonance of literature in our lives” (David Diop) and “a powerful book, crossed by an epic breath that celebrates the power of literature” (Alain Mabanckou).Souleymane Bachir Diagne is Professor of French and Philosophy at Columbia. His field of research includes history of logic, history of philosophy, Islamic philosophy, African philosophy and literature. He has won a number of prestigious prizes including the Dagnan-Bouveret prize awarded by the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for one of his books, Bergson postcolonial. L’élan vital dans la pensée de Senghor et de Mohamed Iqbal, and the Edouard Glissant Prize for his work.This event is made possible with support from Villa Albertine and the Other Press.
How can the humanities help a world in crisis? Columbia Maison Française 2023-11-13 | A Conversation with Frédéric Worms, Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Clémence Boulouque, moderated by Emmanuel KattanRecent years have seen an increasing concern about the decline of the humanities. The number of PhDs in history, philosophy, art history, and literature continues to decrease. However, the humanities continue to play an important role in our universities. They help students learn how to structure their knowledge and think about the world differently. Can the humanities also help us figure out how to address the multiple crises we currently face? Can they give us better tools for understanding social injustice, economic insecurity, threats to our ecology and our health, or risks associated with artificial intelligence? Can they provide a sense of peace of comfort? And finally, can they provide tools for confronting the new dilemmas we now face?We have invited a panel of eminent thinkers to share their reflections on these broad questions.Frédéric Worms is professor of contemporary philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) in Paris. Among his recent pubiications are Vivre en temps réel (2021), Le Vivable et l’invivable (with Judith Butler, 2021), Sidération et résistance: Face à l'événement (2015-2020) (2020), and Pour un humanisme vital: Lettres sur la vie, la mort, le moment présent (2019).Souleymane Bachir Diagne is Professor of French and Philosophy at Columbia. His field of research includes history of logic, history of philosophy, Islamic philosophy, African philosophy and literature. He has won a number of prestigious prizes including the Dagnan-Bouveret prize awarded by the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for one of his books, Bergson postcolonial. L’élan vital dans la pensée de Senghor et de Mohamed Iqbal, and the Edouard Glissant Prize for his work.Clémence Boulouque is the Carl and Bernice Witten Associate Professor in Jewish and Israel studies. Her books include Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh's Jewish Universalism and Nos Apocalypses: ce qui nous lit quand le mal nous frappe. Her interests include Jewish thought and mysticism, interreligious encounters, intellectual history and networks with a focus on the modern Mediterranean and Sefardi worlds, as well as the intersection between religion and the arts, and the study of the unconscious.This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française and the Alliance Program.
The Super 8 Years (Les Années Super 8) Columbia Maison Française 2023-10-27 | The Super 8 Years (Les Années Super 8) by David Ernaux-Briot and Annie ErnauxIn French with English subtitlesQ&A with director David Ernaux-Briot and Thomas DodmanEvent location: Cowin Auditorium, Horace Mann Hall, Teachers CollegeWith her son David Ernaux-Briot, the French writer and 2022 Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux, whose novels and memoirs have gained her a devoted following, opens a treasure trove with this delicate journey into their family’s memory. Compiled from gorgeously textured home movie images from 1972 to 1981 – when her first books were published, her sons became teenagers, and her husband Philippe brought an 8mm film camera everywhere they went – this portrait of a time, place, and moment of personal and political significance takes us from holidays and family rituals in suburban bourgeois France to trips abroad in Albania and Egypt, Spain and the USSR. Supplying her own introspective voiceover, Ernaux and her co-filmmaker, her son David, guide the viewer through fragments of a decade, diffuse and vivid in equal measure. The Super 8 Years is a remarkable visual extension of Ernaux’s ongoing literary project to make sense of the mysterious past and the unknowable future.David Ernaux-Briot, son of Annie and Philippe Ernaux, was born in 1968. He grew up in Annecy and Cergy-Pontoise. After studying science, he decided to focus on scientific journalism and contributed to specialized TV programs such as E=M6 and C’est pas Sorcier. He wrote and directed the mini-series Théâtre des Machines, Corpus, and Art et Sport for Universcience and CANOPE. The Super 8 Years is his first feature-length documentary.The author of some twenty works of fiction and memoirs, Annie Ernaux is considered by many to be France’s most important literary voice today. In 2022, she received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and she also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man’s Place and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. Recently, two of her books were adapted into award-winning films: Simple Passion directed by Danielle Abrid and The Happening directed by Audrey Diwan.Thomas Dodman is Associate Professor in the Department of French at Columbia University and director of the History & Literature program at Columbia's Global Center in Paris. A historian of the long Nineteenth Century, he teaches and publishes on the history of emotions, medical humanities, and the oeuvre of Annie Ernaux.This film is presented as part of the Columbia University Maison Française 2023 Film Festival, Across Generations: Unveiling the Past, Embracing the Present. The festival is curated by Shanny Peer, Fanny Guex and Ilana Custos-Quatreville and produced by the Columbia Maison Française.Additional support is provided by the Knapp Family Foundation and Villa Albertine, and by our festival co-sponsors at Columbia University: Alliance Program, Department of History, ISERP, Institute of African Studies, European Institute, and Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities. The full festival program can be found HERE.This film screening is also supported by Albertine Cinematheque, a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine, with support from the CNC / Centre National du Cinema, and SACEM / Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain.
Provincializing Language: Language and Colonialism, with Cécile Canut Columbia Maison Française 2023-10-26 | Provincializing Language: Language and Colonialism Cécile Canut, in conversation with Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Thomas Dodman IN FRENCHWhen they colonized Africa, Europeans imposed their ideological conception of language, grounded in the idea of language as connected to national culture. This ideology led to the imposition of linguistic imperialism. Not only did missionaries and colonial authorities impose European languages they judged superior, they also relegated “African dialects” to the bottom of an imagined hierarchy of languages. This vision, relayed by some members of the elite in African societies, has survived into the post-colonial area through the creation of “Francophone” institutions, but it has nonetheless always also been contested - and with success. In two recent books, Cécile Canut sheds light on the biases inherent in supposedly scientific studies of language over the course of the 20th century, and invites readers to “provincialize” the very notion of language.Cécile Canut is a sociologist and filmmaker. She is a University Professor of Language Sciences at the University of Paris, and is currently a Fellow at the Institut Universitaire de France at Cerlis.Souleymane Bachir Diagne is Professor of French and Philosophy, and Thomas Dodman is Associate Professor of French, both at Columbia University.
The Theatrical Imagination of Jean-Philippe Rameau Columbia Maison Française 2023-10-26 | Julia Doe talks with Robert Mealy, Director of Julliard415, and the students from Juilliard Historical Performance, about composer RameauIn this musical conversation, Julia Doe talks with Robert Mealy, Director of Julliard415, and the students from Juilliard Historical Performance, about the orchestral imagination of the operatic revolutionary composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. Their conversation will be illustrated by musical excerpts played by Ryan Cheng, (Baroque Violin), Andrew Koutroubas (Baroque Cello), and Dani Zanuttini-Frank (Theorbo), that convey Rameaus’s unique musical imagination.Juilliard415 will be performing a related concert of Rameau’s music, drawn from his operas Castor et Pollux (Paris, 1737) and Dardanus (1739), in the French Touch Series of the Music Before 1800 program on October 1 at Corpus Christi Church, which will also be released online. For more information, see mb1800.org.Julia Doe is Associate Professor of Music and Historical Musicology. She is a scholar of eighteenth-century opera, with particular emphasis on the music, literature, and politics of the French Enlightenment.Robert Mealy has directed the Historical Performance Program at The Juilliard School since 2012, and has led his Juilliard students in acclaimed performances both in New York and abroad, including tours to Europe, India, New Zealand, and Bolivia. Before coming to Juilliard, he taught for many years at Yale and Harvard. He is also one of America’s most prominent Baroque violinists. The New Yorker has called him "New York's world-class early music violinist."This event is co-sponsored by the Maison Française, Department of Music, and Music Before 1800.
Manet Degas Columbia Maison Française 2023-10-12 | A Conversation with Isolde Pludermacher, Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen and Thomas DodmanTo mark the opening of Manet / Degas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (September 24, 2023 to January 7, 2024), we are delighted to host Isolde Pludermacher, who co-curated the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris this spring. Looking at the close and sometimes tumultuous relationship between Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, this exhibition displays over 150 works by the two great masters, placing them side by side, in dialogue with one another and in the context of family ties and friendships, intellectual trends and wider socio-political events. Isolde Pludermarcher will be joined by Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen, who will be teaching a graduate seminar at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts on Manet / Degas, for a conversation moderated by Thomas Dodman.Isolde Pludermacher is senior curator for painting at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. She is a specialist of nineteenth-century art, and has published widely on early impressionism, Manet and Courbet among others. Her exhibitions at Orsay include: Splendeurs et misères. Images de la prostitution, 1850-1910 (2015); Le modèle noir: de Géricault à Matisse (2019, adapted from the Black Model exhibition previously on display at Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery); and Manet / Degas (2023).
Colette and Justin Columbia Maison Française 2023-10-06 | After the screening of Colette and JustinHow do you depict the impact of colonization, decolonization, a civil war and a destructed economy in one film? Director Alain Kassanda decided to portray his grandparents, who lived through all of these traumatizing times.The New York Times published yesterday (Oct. 5, 2023) a review about “Colette and Justin” : nytimes.com/2023/10/05/movies/colette-and-justin-review.html Join us for our next screening with Director ALAIN KASSANDA of his second movie, COCONUT HEAD GENERATIONMONDAY, OCT. 9 AT 6:30 PMColumbia Maison Française, BUELL HALLRSVP : eventbrite.com/e/coconut-head-generation-by-alain-kassanda-2023-89-min-tickets-699218961737?aff=oddtdtcreator&lang=en-us&locale=en_US&status=30&view=listing
A Story of Ones Own (Une Histoire à soi) Columbia Maison Française 2023-10-02 | Film Festival Across GenerationsQ&A with director Amandine Gay and Joyce McMillan, moderated by Shanny PeerAmandine Gay divides her time between creation and advocacy. Filmmaker-producer (Speak Up, 2017 and A Story of One’s Own, 2021), writer-scholar (A Chocolate Doll, 2021) and afrofeminist activist (founder of Adoptee Awareness Month in the francophone world), she defines herself as a political author working to reclaim the narrative as an act of liberation. In 2022, she moved back to Montreal to fulfill this ambition by creating a Black owned production company, Caïssa Productions.Joyce McMillan is a thought leader, advocate, community organizer, educator, and the Founder and Executive Director of Just Making a Change for Families (JMACforFamilies). Her mission is to remove systemic barriers in communities of color by bringing awareness to the racial disparities in systems where people of color are disproportionately affected.
Marina Chiche at CU Maison Française Columbia Maison Française 2023-09-20 | MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2023🎻After a Reading of Bach: the Challenge of Solo ViolinA concert and commentary by Marina ChicheFrench violinist Marina Chiche guides us through a selection of movements from the Sonatas & Partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach and reveal the compositional and instrumental challenges of the solo violin repertoire. Co-sponsored by the Maison Française and Alliance Program.
Columbia Maison Francaise 2023 Film Festival Across Generations Columbia Maison Française 2023-09-05 | Trailer for the Columbia Maison Francaise 2023 Film Festival Across Generations : Unveiling the Past, Embracing the PresentProduced and presented by the Columbia Maison FrançaiseAdditional support provided by the Knapp Family Foundation, Villa Albertine, and Columbia University’s Alliance Program, Department of History, Institute of African Studies, European Institute, and Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the HumanitiesCurated by Shanny Peer, Fanny Guex, and Ilana Custos-QuatrevilleScreenings will be introduced or followed by panel discussions with film directors and invited scholarsAll films are subtitled in English. Screenings are free and open to the public. RSVP required: https://maisonfrancaise.columbia.edu/events/across-generations-unveiling-past-embracing-presentFEATURED FILMSWednesday, September 6 | 7:30 PMDancing the Twist in BamakoRobert Guédiguian, 2021, 129 min. Low Library Plaza (Outdoor Screening)Thursday, September 14 | 6:30 PM | U.S PremiereThe Life Ahead of Us: Another Face of ImmigrationFrédéric Laffont, 2022, 52 min.Q&A with Emmanuelle Saada and Frédéric ViguierEast Gallery, Maison Française, Buell HallThursday, September 21 | 6:30 PM | U.S PremiereA Story of One's OwnAmandine Gay, 2021, 101 min.Q&A with Amandine Gay and Joyce McMillanCowin Auditorium, Horace Mann Hall, Teachers CollegeThursday, October 5 | 6:30 PMColette and JustinAlain Kassanda, 2022, 89 min.Q&A with Alain Kassanda and Souleymane Bachir DiagneCowin Auditorium, Horace Mann Hall, Teachers CollegeThursday, October 12 | 6:30 PMThe Super 8 YearsDavid Ernaux-Briot, Annie Ernaux, 2022, 62 min.Q&A with David Ernaux-Briot and Thomas DodmanCowin Auditorium, Horace Mann Hall, Teachers CollegeTuesday, October 17 | 6:30 PMThe Missing PictureRithy Panh, 2013, 90 min.Q&A with Marianne Hirsch and Leo SpitzerEast Gallery, Maison Française, Buell Hall
Highlights from the Reading of Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux’s Happening Night of Ideas, 2023 Columbia Maison Française 2023-08-25 | For the 2023 Night of Ideas, Columbia University’s Maison Française and Department of French teamed up with Villa Albertine to host a collective public reading of Happening by Annie Ernaux, French author and winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. Happening recounts the abortion Ernaux had at age 23, in 1963, at a time when the procedure was still illegal in France. Her story, told with unsparing honesty, resonates strongly in post-Roe America, where the right to a safe and legal abortion has been curtailed in many states. On March 3rd, Happening was read in English in its entirety, with brief passages performed by more than 30 diverse voices—writers, artists, doctors, teachers, students, activists—in a collective expression of appreciation for Annie Ernaux’s bold work and solidarity for reproductive rights.
Maryse Condé on writing, 2013 Columbia Maison Française 2023-07-15 | Columbia Professor Emerita and acclaimed writer Maryse Condé explains why she decided to write her autobiography, La Vie sans fards (2012), February 6, 2013.
Justin OBrien and students, 1962 Columbia Maison Française 2023-07-15 | Professor Justin O'Brien and French Department students are interviewed for a French TV documentary entitled A New York: êtres de jour, Varèse, April 19, 1962.
Marshal Foch at Columbia, 1921 Columbia Maison Française 2023-07-15 | Marshal Ferdinand Foch is greeted by crowds in New York City and at Columbia, where he receives an honorary doctorate, November 19, 1921.
Carlo Ginzburg in conversation with Emmanuelle Saada, Raphaëlle Burns and Pierre Force Columbia Maison Française 2023-06-07 | Machiavelli’s repeated use of the adverb nondimanco (“nevertheless”) indicated he thought that there was an exception to every rule. This may seem to confirm the traditional image of Machiavelli as a cynical, “machiavellian” thinker. But Carlo Ginzburg’s close analysis of Machiavelli the reader throws a different light on Machiavelli the writer. The same hermeneutic strategy inspires Ginzburg’s essays on the Provinciales, Pascal’s ferocious attack against Jesuitical casuistry, or case-based ethical reasoning. Casuistry versus anti-casuistry; Machiavelli’s secular attitude towards religion versus Pascal’s deep religiosity. These seem to be two completely different worlds. But Pascal read Machiavelli and reflected deeply upon his work. Ginzburg’s book unveils the complex relationship between Machiavelli and Pascal—their divergences as well as their unexpected convergences.Carlo Ginzburg is an Italian historian and pioneer of micro-history. He is best known for The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, which examined the beliefs of an Italian heretic, Menocchio, from Montereale Valcellina. His many other books include The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath.Pierre Force is Professor of French and History and Emmanuelle Saada is Professor of French and History at Columbia University. Raphaëlle Burns is Assistant Professor at UCLA where she teaches and writes about the literatures and cultures of medieval and early modern Europe, with secondary specializations in the history of journalism, medicine, and law.This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française, the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, and the Department of History.
Kaoutar Harchi, in conversation in French with Madeleine Dobie Columbia Maison Française 2023-06-07 | Kaoutar Harchi, novelist, essayist and literary critic, is the author of novels including L’Ampleur du saccage and Zone cinglée. Her study of Maghrebi writers who publish in French, Je n'ai qu'une langue et ce n'est pas la mienne (Fayard, 2016) will appear in English translation this spring with Liverpool University Press. Concurrently, her memoir Comme nous existons, which recounts her experience of growing up as the child of Moroccan immigrants and navigating the French academic system has just been translated by Emma Ramandan for Other Press under the title As we exist.Kaoutar Harchi was born in Strasbourg, France, and was a visiting professor at New York University in 2019. She is a sociologist whose work focuses on political relations between speciesism, racism, and sexism in postindustrial societies. Madeleine Dobie is Professor and Chair of the French Department at Columbia.
Today Sardines Are Not for Sale: A Street Protest in Occupied Paris Columbia Maison Française 2023-05-25 | Paula Schwartz, in conversation with Philip Nord and Marianne HirschOn Mother's Day, May 31, 1942, a group of women stormed a small grocery store at the corner of the rue de Buci and the rue de Seine, to protest the food shortages that had become a chronic feature of daily life. The then-outlawed French Communist party aimed to channel the frustrations of hungry Parisians by organizing actions like this "women's demonstration on the rue de Buci" as part of a larger, overarching resistance movement against the collaborationist Vichy regime and German occupiers. The Buci affair became a cause célèbre, in no small part owing to its tragic consequences: the imprisonment, deportation, and execution of some of the protagonists. In Today Sardines are not for Sale, Paula Schwartz takes an in-depth look at this singular event, its dramatic repercussions, and its rich postwar afterlife. This book was the Winner of the Philippe Viannay-Défense de la France Prize in 2020.Paula Schwartz is the Lois B. Watson Professor of French Studies, Emeritus, at Middlebury College, where she taught courses on 20th-century France, food studies, and European studies. Her scholarship focuses on women and gender in the French Resistance, the French Communist underground, and daily life during the Second World War.Philip Nord is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He studies the political and cultural history of modern France.Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Center for the Study of Sexuality.
Tombeaux: Autobiographie de ma famille by Annette Wieviorka Columbia Maison Française 2023-04-08 | A lecture in French by Annette WieviorkaLors du décès d'une tante sans descendance, Annette Wieviorka réfléchit aux traces laissées par tous les êtres disparus qui constituent sa famille, une famille juive malmenée par l’Histoire. Il y a le côté Wieviorka et le côté Perelman. Wolf, l’intellectuel yiddish précaire, et Chaskiel, le tailleur taiseux. L’un écrit, l’autre coud. Ils sont arrivés à Paris au début des années 1920, en provenance de Pologne. Dans un récit en forme de tombeaux de papier qui font œuvre de sépultures, l’historienne adopte un ton personnel, voire intime, et plonge dans les archives, les généalogies, les souvenirs directs ou indirects. Par ces vies et ces destins recueillis, on traverse un siècle cabossé, puis tragique : d’abord la difficile installation de ces immigrés, la pauvreté, les années politiques, l’engagement communiste ou socialiste, le rapport complexe à la religion et à la judéité, puis la guerre, les rafles, la fuite ou la déportation – Paris, Nice, la Suisse, Auschwitz – et enfin, pour certains, le difficile retour à la vie marqué par un autre drame.Directrice de recherche honoraire au CNRS, Annette Wieviorka est une spécialiste mondialement reconnue de l’histoire de la Shoah. Elle a notamment publié Auschwitz expliqué à ma fille (1999), 1945, La Découverte (2015) et Mes années chinoises (2021).This event is sponsored by the Knapp Family Foundation.
Annual Columbia University Department of French and AATF Workshop for Teachers of French Columbia Maison Française 2023-04-03 | AATF Workshop for Teachers of French : Exploration sur des questions culturelles et sociales à travers l'utilisation de supports audiovisuelsPresented by the Columbia Department of French and the Metropolitan Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of FrenchThis year's free, annual workshop for teachers of French, co-presented by the Columbia French Department and the Metropolitan Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of French, will feature presentations on the theme of "L'Exploration de questions culturelles et sociales à l'aide de supports audiovisuels."This conference will be in French.10:00 Introduction par Heidi Holst-Knudsen et modération par Polly Duke 10:05-10:35 Laurence Marie: Nouvelles ressources sur Molière (à l'occasion de son 400e anniversaire)10:35-11:05 Sophie Queuniet: Comprendre la nouvelle loi sur la bioéthique10 minutes de pause11:15-11:45 Wesley Gunter: Joséphine Baker : une Américaine au Panthéon11:45-12:15 Pauline Guedj: La globalisation du hip hop en France : enjeux sociaux et culturels15 minutes de pause12:30-1:00 Pascale Crépon: Les enjeux de la restitution d’œuvres d’art1:00-1:30 Pascale Hubert-Leibler: Le système éducatif français : l'avant et l'après de la réforme Blanquer
Angels Interview Film Columbia Maison Française 2023-03-30 | Jasmine Bissete, 2021, 6 min. Film screening and discussion with director Jasmine Bissete and Professor Roxanne Varzi. This event will feature a screening of the short film Anges, followed by a Q&A session with Professor Roxanne Varzi and director Jasmine Bissete, along with an accompanying talk by Professor Varzi on French-Iranian cultural relations.Anges has been featured in numerous international film festivals including the New York Shorts International Film Festival, Catalina Film Festival, Montecatini International Short Film Festival, Pittsburgh Shorts, Cyprus International Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Detmold in Germany, and the Rabat International Children and Family Film Festival, which takes place at the Institut Français Rabat. The film was awarded the Best Director prize at the Children’s International Film Festival of Wales. The film was awarded the Best Director Prize at the Children’s International Film Festival of Wales.Director Jasmine Bissete graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Columbia University, Columbia College. She is a filmmaker and the co-founder and Creative Director of Kinglet Films, a production company operating in New York and Paris with a focus on fostering cross-cultural connections through cinema.Professor Roxanne Varzi is an Iranian-born American cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, sound artist, writer, playwright, and educator. She is a full professor of anthropology and film and media studies at University of California, Irvine.
Poésie et Politique : Devenir ensemble Columbia Maison Française 2023-03-30 | Jean-Marie Gleize and Marielle Macé, moderated by André Pettman. Readings and discussion in French.From Victor Hugo and Arthur Rimbaud to Négritude writers and the Surrealists, poetry has long been a site of political expression and commitment. This panel brings together Marielle Macé and Jean-Marie Gleize, two contemporary French writers for whom poetry is not simply a textual site of political commitment, but, rather, a veritable means of concrete political action. Readings and discussions by both authors will grapple with the relationship between poetry and politics and reflect on contemporary poetry as a form of political practice. For Macé & Gleize, poetry is a salient means of confronting the myriad plights afflicting our world — for example, capitalist expansion, ecological devastation, and socioeconomic precarity. In the face of this, both authors also consider poetry as a means of being in solidarity with and defending diverse forms of life, from the migrants of Calais to the flora and fauna of the Earth. Further still, Macé & Gleize draw our attention to all that resists the ruinous logics of our contemporary world and create new worlds, such as the autonomous commune at Tarnac and the cabins built by those blocking the construction of an airport at the Zone à defendre (ZAD) at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Poetry holds the potential of listening to these forms of life and cultivating worlds in common, nurturing the community, possibility, and freedom that dwell and circulate through them. Marielle Macé is a writer, scholar, and Research Director at the CNRS, as well as professor of literature at EHESS. Her work brings poetry into dialogue with anthropologies of different forms of life – communities, environments, beings, and lives in their multiplicity. She is the author of numerous texts including Styles: Critiques de nos formes de vie (Gallimard, 2017); Sidérer, considérer : Migrants en France 2017 (Verdier, 2017); Nos cabanes (Verdier, 2019); and her most recent book Une pluie d’oiseaux (José Corti, 2022).Jean-Marie Gleize is a poet, professor, and editor of the poetry review Nioques. He has taught at the Université d’Aix-en-Provence and the École normale supérieure de Lyon. He is considered to be one of the foremost theoreticians and practitioners of contemporary experimental French poetry. He is the author of over twenty books, including Tarnac, un acte préparatoire (Seuil, 2011); Le livre des cabanes (Seuil, 2015); Trouver ici (Seuil, 2018); and Dans le style d’attente (Les Presses du réel/Al Dante, 2022).André Pettman (he/him) is a PhD candidate in French at Columbia University. His research focuses on communes and the communal imaginary in contemporary French literature.This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française and the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought.
An introduction by Prof. Thomas Dodman and Chiara Gabily Dodman of Happening by Audrey Diwan Columbia Maison Française 2023-02-25 | An adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s novel of the same name, looking back on her experience with abortion when it was still illegal in France in the 1960s. France, 1963. Anne is a bright young student with a promising future ahead of her. But when she falls pregnant, she sees the opportunity to finish her studies and escape the constraints of her social background disappearing. With her final exams fast approaching and her belly growing, Anne resolves to act, even if she has to confront shame and pain, even if she must risk prison to do so…Happening won the top prize at the 78th edition of the world's oldest film festival, the Venice Film Festival. Audrey Diwan is a French film director of Lebanese origin. Prior to becoming a film director she worked as a journalist and a screenwriter. She is a member of Collectif 50/50, a French NGO promoting equality between men and women in the film industry.Annie Thérèse Blanche Ernaux is a French writer, professor of literature and Nobel laureate. Her literary work, mostly autobiographical, maintains close links with sociology.This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française with additional support by the Albertine Cinematheque, a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine, with support from the CNC / Centre National du Cinema, and SACEM / Fonds Culturel Franco-Americain.
Discussion with Dr. Gabriel Sara, Dr. Lydia Dugdale, and Shanny Peer Columbia Maison Française 2023-02-09 | Discussion with Dr. Gabriel Sara, the Mount Sinai oncologist who acts as Dr. Eddé in the film, and Dr. Lydia Dugdale, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons and author of The Lost Art of Dying, moderated by Shanny Peer, Director of the Maison Française.What does it mean to die “peacefully”? Is it possible to find grace and joy in something so solemn that we generally turn away from? That death has the power to grant forgiveness and empathy is the core tenet of Emmannuelle Bercot’s drama Peaceful, which explores a year in the life of a young man facing a terminal diagnosis. Benoît Magimel (The Piano Teacher) stars as Benjamin, a 39-year-old acting teacher who, after some months of back pain, learns that he has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It’s a brutal diagnosis not only for him, but also for his mother Crystal (Catherine Deneuve).Luckily for Benjamin, he has a truly remarkable doctor, a model of compassion, in Dr. Eddé (Gabriel Sara), a real-life oncologist hired by Bercot as a consultant before deciding to cast him in the role of the doctor in his first-ever acting job. Dr. Eddé is calm, wise, and funny; he listens to Benjamin and his mother without giving in to their tendency toward denial and resistance. The real-life Dr. Gabriel Sara and the doctor he plays is the greatest surprise and asset of the film; he shows wisdom and generosity towards not only those in his ward but his employees as well. Peaceful occasionally takes us out of the patients’ world and highlights the emotional strain put on the nurses and doctors, showing how terminal illness affects everyone.Peaceful is unrivaled as a film that offers wisdom about how to behave around someone facing a terminal diagnosis, and how to face one’s own death with honesty and dignity. Dr. Eddé’s lessons to Benjamin and Crystal feel like messages aimed both to them and to the audience. The better we can prepare ourselves for facing or accompanying a loved one entering the final stage of life, the more peaceful death can be.The New York Times reviewed the film and featured Dr. Gabriel Sara. Other reviews include those in Le Monde and La Croix.Dr. Gabriel Sara describes his approach to terminal illness in a podcast episode about My Experiments with the Truth featured on the Road to Resilience podcast presented by Mount Sinai Hospital.This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française, the Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics in the Department of Medicine at Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, and the Medical Humanities program at Columbia University.
The Proust Pandemic of 2022 - A talk by Antoine Compagnon Columbia Maison Française 2022-12-03 | Marcel Proust passed away in November 1922. This year marks the 100th anniversary of his death. Professor Antoine Compagnon, a preeminent Proust scholar, was the curator of two important exhibitions in Paris, among many celebrations during this anniversary year. In this talk, he takes us through these celebrations and exhibitions, with words and images. Marcel Proust du côté de la mère was on view at the Musée d’art et d'histoire du Judaïsme (April - August 2022), and Marcel Proust, la fabrique de l’œuvre can be seen at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (until January 22, 2023).Antoine Compagnon is the Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He was Professor of Modern and Contemporary French Literature at the Collège de France from 2005 to 2020. In February 2022, he was elected to the Académie française. Professor Compagnon is the author of some twenty-five books, including several works on Marcel Proust and, most recently, La Vie derrière soi, about the relationship between creativity and old age, and Proust du côté juif.
Our Apocalypses - A talk by Clémence Boulouque, introduced by Christia Mercer Columbia Maison Française 2022-12-03 | In her recently published book, Nos Apocalypses, a finalist for the 2022 Prix Medicis, Clémence Boulouque surveys religious responses to epidemics, from Exodus to the coronavirus, and of literary descriptions of diseases, from Boccacio and Goethe to Camus and Octavia Butler. Functioning as social criticism, scriptures and literary texts allow us to engage with questions of collective guilt, collective mourning, and divine justice (or the lack thereof), and to grapple with the societal disruptions, persecution, and discriminations that illnesses create or expose. While some of the parallels with our current times are obvious, these texts also help us to nuance responses to past epidemics and to read them anew. Nos Apocalypses is thus an invitation to understand scriptures as literature and to contemplate the uses of religious imagination in order to ponder what brings us together when disaster strikes. Clémence Boulouque is the Carl and Bernice Witten Associate Professor in Jewish and Israel studies at Columbia University. She is the author of Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh's Jewish Universalism (Stanford University Press) and co-editor of the Stanford Studies in Jewish Mysticism series. Her interests include Jewish thought and mysticism, interreligious encounters, intellectual history and networks with a focus on the modern Mediterranean and Sefardi worlds, as well as the intersection between religion and the arts, and the study of the unconscious. Prior to embarking on an academic career, Clémence Boulouque worked as a novelist and literary and movie critic in Paris. This talk is made possible by support from the Knapp Family Foundation. It is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française, Department of Religion, Institute for Jewish and Israel Studies, the Institute for Culture, Religion and Public Life, and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.
Visual and Political Culture in Contemporary Algeria Columbia Maison Française 2022-11-10 | Photography has been an important point of departure for the exploration of the political possibilities of images in contemporary Algeria. In this panel discussion in French, Ammar Bouras and Mourad Krinah, two leading Algerian visual artists, discuss visual culture and politics with Selma Hellal, visionary editor of Barzakh Press, whose catalog includes arresting photo journals and photographic chronicles, and Malika Rahal, a historian whose innovative writing explores the intersections of history and memory. - Ammar Bouras, Algerian Photographer and Visual Artist- Selma Hellal, co-founder of Barzakh publishing house in Algiers- Mourad Krinah, Algerian Visual Artist and Graphic DesignerModerated by Madeleine Dobie, Chair of French Department, and Professor of French and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
A conversation with Safia Kouaci and Meriem Merzouga moderated by Adel Ben Bella Columbia Maison Française 2022-11-09 | Exhibition Opening: Witnessing and Documenting the Making of the FLN: A conversation with Safia Kouaci and Meriem Merzouga. Photographs for the Mohamed Kouaci: Vision(s) of Algeria exhibit are presented courtesy of Safia Kouaci.Moderated by: Adel Ben Bella, curator and PhD student in Modern Culture and Media, Brown University. Safia Kouaci is an ex FLN militant and the widow of Algerian photographer Mohamed Kouaci, with whom she shared her life for almost half a century until his death in 1996. She spent most of the war in Tunis as a documentalist at the Centre de documentation du ministère de l'information, participating in the making of the FLN newspaper El Moudjahid, where Mohamed Kouaci was photo editor and photographer. Meriem Merzouga, originally from the Casbah of Algiers, was a close aide to first Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella. Based in France during most of the war, she was active in the French Federation of the FLN until returning to Algeria in 1962. She became a privileged witness of the formation of the first Algerian government and nascent Independent Algerian State.
Q&A with Maureen Raymo and Jonny Kingslake moderated by Shanny Peer on Antarctica: Ice and Sky, 2015 Columbia Maison Française 2022-11-09 | Antarctica: Ice and Sky tells the story of French glaciologist Claude Lorius, who found his life’s calling at age 23 on a scientific expedition to the Antarctic and became one of the first scientists to call attention to anthropogenic climate change. Antarctica: Ice and Sky is an epic tale, in which science and adventure meet. The film assembles decades of dramatic archival footage of the early days of scientific exploration in sub-zero temperatures in the polar regions, including Lorius’s pioneering work to develop an ice corer that would eventually extract ice cores thousands of meters below the frozen surface to look hundreds of thousands of years back into the history of the climate. One of Lorius’s most significant discoveries—made when he placed some ancient ice in celebratory glasses of whiskey—was that the ice contained air from the era in which it was formed. Luc Jacquet is a French film director and screenwriter. He has a master's degree in Animal Biology and a DEA in management of natural mountain environments. He wrote and directed the film March of the Penguins, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2005 and received a nomination for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay. He also directed The Fox And the Child (2008), with narration by Kate Winslet in the English version. His film Antarctica: Ice and Sky was selected to close the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.Maureen Raymo is Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School, Director of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences, and Director of the Lamont-Doherty Core Repository. Raymo’s research has always focused on documenting how and discovering why the Earth's oceans, biogeochemical cycles, and climate have changed in the past, knowledge that is integrated with numerical models of past and future climate. Jonny Kingslake is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. His research is concerned with obtaining a better understanding of glacial processes to improve predictions of ice-sheet evolution, using remote-sensing, mathematical modeling and fieldwork.Shanny Peer is the Director of the Columbia Maison Française and holds a Ph.D. in French Studies from NYU. She is a co-curator of the Being in the World film festival.
Q&A with John Furlow and Alex de Sherbinin moderated by Shanny Peer Columbia Maison Française 2022-11-08 | This screening is part of the festival Being in the World: People and the Planet in French and Francophone cinema. The effects of climate change on Africa’s Sahel region are devastating: desertification, famine, conflict and migration. Yet some hope lies in the Great Green Wall, an ambitious reforestation project spanning the continent aimed at revitalizing ecosystems and restoring economies. In this story of resilience and self-determination executive produced by Fernando Meirelles, Malian musician/activist Inna Modja journeys from Senegal to Djibouti gathering stories and sharing songs with those on the frontline of the fight to save their land and their ways of life.John Furlow is the Director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia. His focus is on connecting complex climate science to decision making to improve lives and livelihoods in developing countries. He is interested in policy reform that reflects the value of climate information in supporting important socio-economic sectors, such as agriculture and public health. Prior to coming to IRI, John designed and led the Climate Change Adaptation Program in USAID’s climate change office.Alex de Sherbinin is the Deputy Director and a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), a spatial data and analysis center within the Columbia Climate School specializing in the human aspects of global environmental change. Dr. de Sherbinin is a geographer whose research interests focus on the human aspects of global environmental change and geospatial data applications, integration, and dissemination. He has led projects funded by NASA, UNDP, UNEP, the US Agency for Development, and The World Bank.Shanny Peer is the Director of the Columbia Maison Française and holds a Ph.D. in French Studies from NYU. She is a co-curator of the Being in the World film festival.
Q&A with Director Flore Vasseur and Mélody Braun moderated by Shanny Peer Columbia Maison Française 2022-11-08 | Filmed in Malawi, Lebanon, Brazil, the U.S., Greece, Indonesia and Uganda, Bigger Than Us is a feature-length documentary about seven inspiring teenage and young adult activists engaging, like many in their generation, in a struggle for human rights, freedom of expression, social and environmental justice, women’s rights, access to education and food, and a liveable climate. In Indonesia, Melati leads an effort to fight the plastic pollution ravaging her country. Mohamad is a Syrian refugee who built a school when he was still a teenager himself to teach Syrian refugee children living in temporary camps in Lebanon. Winnie began organizing as a teenager and succeeded in changing the legal marriage age from 15 to 18 in Malawi. Memory bought herself an education by carrying food to her teachers in Uganda and now helps refugee farmers in her country learn permaculture to rehabilitate soils ravaged by chemical pesticides and overuse. Mary rescues migrants crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece. Rene created a newspaper at age 11 in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Xiuhtezcatl battles against fracking and environmental racism in Colorado on behalf of his ancestors and future generations. All of them set an admirable and inspiring example in their quest to preserve human dignity and protect the natural environment, and to engage passionately in something “bigger than us.” Flore Vasseur is a French novelist, director and producer. An entrepreneur in New York at the age of 24, Flore Vasseur lived through the Internet bubble, September 11 and a capitalist system that was cracking on all sides. Since then, she has written books, articles and television documentaries to understand the end of one world and the emergence of another. Her latest book, What Remains of Our Dreams, is an investigative novel about the little-known real-life story of Aaron Swartz, the child prodigy of code who wanted us to be free, persecuted by the Obama administration. Bigger than Us is her first documentary film.Mélody Braun is a Senior Staff Associate at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, with a multidisciplinary background in Earth science, sustainable development and adaptation to climate change. Her work focuses on the design/support of strategies to improve integration of climate information into decision making processes to increase preparedness, response and resilience to climate impacts. She is particularly interested in systemic and transdisciplinary approaches to bridge the gap between decision makers, climate scientists and policy makers.
Panel Discussion on Traces of Memory: The War of Independence in Visual Culture Columbia Maison Française 2022-11-08 | This panel and exhibition opening are part of a larger series of events on Algeria at 60: Images from a Revolution. Panel DiscussionThe wartime photography of Mohamed Kouaci, which is being exhibited for the first time outside Algeria, presents an opportunity to reflect on photography as a site of memory. Four scholars of Algerian visual culture discuss how the history of the Algerian War has been communicated through images. The discussion will be led by Marianne Hirsch, whose work has shaped conversations on memory and photography.Panelists:- Meryem Belkaïd, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Bowdoin College- Zeynep Çelik, Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Design, New Jersey Institute of Technology;- Sakıp Sabancı Visiting Professor of History, Columbia University- Samia Henni, Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism, Cornell University- Jill Jarvis, Assistant Professor of French, Yale UniversityModerated by Marianne Hirsch, William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature & Professor in the Center for the Study of Sexuality, Columbia University
Q&A with Corine Sombrun and Audrey Breton, moderated by Shanny Peer Columbia Maison Française 2022-10-14 | Discussion and Q&A with Corine Sombrun and Audrey Breton, moderated by Shanny Peer after the screening of A Bigger World (Un Monde plus grand) by Fabienne Berthaud, 2019. In order to get over the death of Paul, the love of her life, Corine (played by Cécile de France) leaves Paris for a few weeks to work as a sound engineer recording a shamanic ceremony in a remote corner of Mongolia populated by reindeer herders known as the Tsaatan. But her meeting with the shaman Oyun upends her plans, as Oyun tells Corine that she has received a rare gift and must be trained in shamanic traditions. She resists at first and returns to France, but she can’t shake off the shamanic visions and decides to return to Mongolia to begin her initiation... and discover a bigger world. This movie is based on the experience of Corine Sombrun, as told in her autobiographical account Mon initiation chez les Chamanes, who served as an advisor on the film. Since returning from her own experience in Mongolia, she has worked for 10 years with neuroscientists and psychiatrists in France doing brain research to understand the shamanic experience.Fabienne Berthaud is a French writer, actress, screenwriter and director. She started her career as film and theater actor, wrote four books and the script for a short film that she also co-directed. When, in 2001, she discovered the psychiatric institution La Chesnai for a novel, she decided to film the clinic. Frankie (2005) was her feature début as director, followed by Little Sometimes (2010), Sky (2016), A Bigger World, and Little Man Tom (2021).Corine Sombrun grew up in Africa and returned to France to study musicology, piano and composition. Working for the BBC World Service, she was sent to Mongolia, where a highly respected local Dahradshaman recognized her as having unique shamanistic capabilities. She was invited to undertake the rigorous and intense training to become a Shaman, and after eight years she became the first Western woman fully trained in the Mongolian shamanic tradition. Her unique experience in the practice of shamanic trance and her ability to self-induce it have been a topic of interest for scientists. She has been collaborating with researchers since 2006, in order to show how this shamanic trance modifies the circuits of cerebral functioning. With researchers she developed "Cognitive Trance Training," a sound-loop based program to help people experience an altered state of consciousness and learn how to self-induce it. Corine also collaborates extensively with artists, and she has written several books, translated into many languages, including In Geronimo's Footsteps, Les Esprits de la steppe, and Mon initiation chez les Chamanes, which was adapted for cinema in A Bigger World.Audrey Breton has a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience and her interests include studying the effects of neurofeedback on the brain, and modified states of consciousness. She is the director of the Transcience Research Institute, where she coordinates different research projects on the study of the cognitive effects of trance states. Her own research currently focuses on the effect of self-induced trance on social cognition.
Q&A with Ralph Ghoche and Jeffrey Potent, moderated by Shanny Peer Columbia Maison Française 2022-10-14 | The screening of In the Name of the Earth is part of the festival Being in the World: People and the Planet in French and Francophone cinema. Pierre Rabhi was a farmer, writer, thinker, and international activist. He was one of the pioneers of agroecology in France. Passionate and committed for forty years to improving the condition of humankind and nature, he worked throughout his life to raise awareness about the natural world and about alternative approaches to farming, and envisioned a new model of society where a more healthy and "happy simplicity" would replace overconsumption, human destruction of the natural world, and the malaise of contemporary life. This documentary retraces the itinerary of this “wise man,” from the Algerian desert where he was born in 1938, to Ardeche, France, where he and his wife bought land and raised a family while teaching themselves how to tend the land organically, to helping communities learn organic farming practices, including several years spent working in Burkina Faso. This is the inspiring life story of a man of deep reflection and action “on behalf of the earth.” Marie-Dominique Dhelsing is a visual artist, photographer and documentary director. She has been making documentary films for the past twenty years on cultural and social subjects. After having taught at the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg, she intervenes regularly at the University of Poitiers and regularly offers workshops in connection with her artistic practice.Ralph Ghoche is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Barnard College. His current research looks at the territorial interventions of the Catholic Church in Colonial Algeria in the 19th century. His teaching interests include courses on landscape theory and ecology, utopian urbanism, and architecture and the biological metaphor.Jeffrey Potent is an Adjunct Professor at SIPA, where he teaches the graduate course in corporate sustainability and he has taught courses in systems theory, natural capital valuation, and sustainable agriculture at the Columbia Earth Institute. He serves on the faculty steering committee for the Columbia Climate School, Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems Network and co-leads its Local Food Systems Research Hub. Shanny Peer is the Director of the Columbia Maison Française and holds a Ph.D. in French Studies from NYU. She is a co-curator of the Being in the World film festival.
Q&A with Animals director Cyril Dion and Leah Aronowsky Columbia Maison Française 2022-10-10 | Filmmaker, environmental activist, writer, and poet Cyril Dion will engage in a wide-ranging discussion with Shanny Peer and Leah Aronowsky to talk about Animal and his other films, Tomorrow and After Tomorrow, as well as his political engagement in the climate movement, including his involvement in mounting the Affaire du Siècle which sued the French government for inaction on climate change; his advocacy for and shaping of the Citizens Convention for Climate, a citizens' assembly held in 2019 and 2020 that debated and then proposed ways to reduce France's carbon emissions by 40% from its 1990 levels in a spirit of social justice; and his Petit manuel de résistance contemporaine, which underlines the importance of stories in the evolution of society. Cyril will also read some of his poetry and talk about writers and artists he finds most inspiring for thinking about more radical ways of "being in the world."
Q&A with Julie Gauthier on her movies Narcose, Ama, One Breath Around the World and Narcisse Columbia Maison Française 2022-10-03 | In One Breath Around the World, French free-diving champions Julie Gautier and Guillaume Néry take viewers on an underwater odyssey across the globe. Shooting underwater in locations from Mauritius to Mexico to Japan, Néry and Gautier explore submerged ruins, swim beneath a thick sheet of ice, and mingle with a pod of sleeping sperm whales. They capture mesmerizing images of parts of the planet unseen by most of its human inhabitants. In Ama, Julie Gautier performs and directs a captivating underwater dance solo, that is intended to honor the strength, suffering, and resiliency of women. Narcisse is a beautiful cinematic illusion and a contemporary interpretation of a classic myth about how ego is leading humanity to drown in its own image. In Narcose, Gautier and Guillaume Néry relate the interior journey of Néry, the apnea world champion, during one of his deep water dives. It draws its inspiration from his physical experience and the narrative of his hallucinations induced by free diving.Julie Gautier is a free diver, choreographer, dancer, and filmmaker. Gautier was born on Réunion Island, surrounded by the Indian Ocean, daughter to a free diver and spearfisher father, and a mother who taught dance. In 2006, she broke the French female record for the deepest free dive, plunging unassisted to a depth of 65 meters, and then broke her own record, diving to 68 meters. She began directing short films shot underwater in 2014. Her objective is to combine her artistry and diving experience to raise awareness about the ocean, showing its wildest and most amazing side. Gabri Christa is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice in the Department of Dance and the director of the Movement Lab at Barnard. She hails from Curaçao, Dutch Caribbean – where she grew up windsurfing, diving and snorkeling – and has worked as a choreographer and dancer with companies such as Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, DanzAbierta and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Christa is also an award-winning filmmaker and the founding director of the Moving Image Moving Body Festival, a biennial social justice topics festival, which will focus on Climate Justice and the moving body on Screen in its 2024 edition.
Emmanuel Gras Q&A Columbia Maison Française 2022-09-26 | Emmanuel Gras joined us for a virtual discussion of his film A Cow’s Life on September 14 2022. Emmanuel Gras is a director of documentary-inspired films. His films address social topics and rely on a method of radical formalism. His works are at once experiments on what cinema can produce and how it can address a particular subject. They have been selected to be shown at numerous international festivals such as Vienna International Film Festival, BFI-London, New Directors New Film-New York, TIFF-Toronto, CPH: DOX-Copenhagen, KVIFF-Karlovy Vary, DOKer-Moscow, IDFA-Amsterdam, and have won several awards. His first feature film, Bovines, was nominated at the French Césars in 2013 for best documentary, while his more recent work, Makala, won the Critics' Week Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. In 2019-20, he was a Fellow of the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris.
Cosmopolitical Agency: a Necessity and an Aporia? Columbia Maison Française 2022-09-23 | As our Planet is entering an era of immediate urgencies and perils linked to global warming, regional wars, pandemics, but also migrations, communications, intercultural creativity, every politics becomes cosmopolitical: a politics of the Human Race as such. Etienne Balibar explores how the old philosophical question of a citizenship of the world must be elaborated in its concrete figures and obstacles.Etienne Balibar has been teaching as a Visiting Professor in French and Comparative Literature at Columbia from 2012 to 2020. He is Professor Emeritus of moral and political philosophy at Université de Paris X – Nanterre and Professor Emeritus of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. He also holds a part-time Anniversary Chair in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. He has published widely in the areas of epistemology, Marxist philosophy, and moral and political philosophy in general.Etienne Balibar's talk will be introduced by Madeleine Dobie.This lecture is co-presented by the Maison Française, Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, and Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as part of the ICLS lecture series on "Understanding Systemic Racism."
Discussion on Free Market: The History of an Idea with Jacob Soll Columbia Maison Française 2022-09-14 | Jacob Soll, in conversation with Pierre Force, John Shovlin, Carl Wennerlind, and Emmanuelle SaadaAfter two government bailouts of the U.S. economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market: the History of an Idea, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets. But in the eighteenth century, thinkers insisted on free markets without state intervention, leading to a tradition of ideological brittleness. That tradition only calcified in the centuries that followed. Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it—and to develop new economic concepts to face today’s challenges.Jacob Soll is professor of history and accounting at the University of Southern California. He has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including two NEH Fellowships, the Jacques Barzun Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2011, the MacArthur Fellowship. He also advises political and financial leaders across the globe to promote accounting standards and financial transparency.Joining Jacob Soll to discuss his book will be: Pierre Force, Professor of French and History at Columbia; John Shovlin, Professor of History at NYU; and Carl Wennerlind, Professor of History at Barnard College. Emmanuelle Saada, Professor of History and French at Columbia, will moderate the discussion.This event is co-sponsored by the Maison Française and the Department of History.
Trailer - Being in the World Film Festival Columbia Maison Française 2022-09-06 | More info and RSVP here: maisonfrancaise.org/being-in-the-world-people-and-the-planet-in-french-and-francophone-cinemaColumbia University’s Maison Française presents 14 movies in its 2022 film festival about Being in the World: People and the Planet in French and Francophone Cinema. At a time of unprecedented threat to the planetary environment and stable climate that have made the growth of human civilization possible, we need to reconsider humanity’s place in the living world and the nature of our relationship with other species and the biosphere. By sharing these stories filmed by French and Francophone directors about people who seek to inhabit the earth differently, who understand the value of the natural environment and living creatures that surround us, and who have made activism a daily commitment, this festival opens windows on different ways of being in the world. The selection of films aims not just to inform us about the changing climate and risks to the planet’s environment, but to inspire us by highlighting constructive examples of people who appreciate the natural world and are working hard to find ways we can protect it and live within it sustainably. Most of the featured movies are recent releases and many of them have rarely been shown in the United States; several are U.S. premieres, one is an underappreciated gem of French cinema, another a cult classic. Several films portray subjects pushing human limits to the extreme in a quest to explore the furthest reaches of the natural world – from the majestic heights of the Himalayan Mountains, in search of the mysterious and elusive snow leopard (Marie Amiguet and Vincent Munier’s The Velvet Queen, which kicks off the film series), to the ocean depths (with Luc Besson’s classic film The Big Blue, inspired by the life of two champion free divers, Jacques Mayol and Enzo Maiorca, and several exquisite short films shot under water by free diver and director Julie Gautier), and the frigid polar regions (Luc Jacquet’s Antarctica: Ice and Sky about glaciologist Claude Lorius). Other featured films depict the changing relationship of farmers to the land they tend and the food they grow, from traditional subsistence farming – Georges Rouqiuer’s beautiful 1946 docu-fiction Farrebique – to agroecology and organic farming, with Pierre Rabhi, a remarkable Algerian-born farmer, thinker, writer, and international activist. Emmanuel Gras’s gorgeous documentary, A Cow’s Life, invites us to see the world from a cow’s perspective. Several movies explore some of the consequences of the climate crisis and humanity’s destructive relationship with the biosphere: Above Water, filmed in Niger by Aïssa Maïga, portrays one village’s quest to find water; Cyril Dion’s 2021 film Animal follows young activists seeking to understand the sixth mass extinction of earth’s species; and The Great Green Wall tracks the ambitious vision to grow a “wall” of trees stretching across the entire African continent to restore land and provide a future for millions of people. Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s documentary about the Chauvet cave drawings created some 32,000 years ago, and Fabienne Berthaud’s A Bigger World, about shamanism in Mongolia, invite us to imagine different ways of relating to the natural world and to the invisible forces that are foreign to our modern materialistic and anthropocentric worldview. Michael Dudok de Wit’s animated film, The Red Turtle, offers an exquisitely poetic allegory about the human life cycle lived out in spare relationship with a tropical island’s natural environment. The festival’s closing film portrays inspiring examples of young people all across the world, from Indonesia to Malawi, leading efforts to preserve human dignity and protect nature, and to engage passionately in something Bigger Than Us.More info and RSVP here: maisonfrancaise.org/being-in-the-world-people-and-the-planet-in-french-and-francophone-cinema
Translators Speak Out: Translating Contemporary French and Francophone Literature Columbia Maison Française 2022-05-03 | A Virtual Panel with Matt Smith, Chris Clarke, Rachel Galvin, and Edward Gauvin, moderated by Aubrey GabelThis panel brings together a few active translators of French-language texts to talk about their recent work, in a variety of genres (including critical theory, prose fiction, graphic novels, poetry, etc.). Panelists Matt Smith (translator of authors Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Jacques Roubaud, and Frédéric Forte), Chris Clarke (member of the translation collective OuTransPo), Rachel Galvin (member of the translation collective OuTransPo), and Edward Gauvin (translator, writer, and independent scholar) will each discuss recent translations and the challenges they posed, before moving into a discussion about translation today: the art, the practice, and the industry.Matt Smith is Associate Professor at Northern Illinois University.Chris Clarke is Lecturer at University of Pennsylvania.Rachel Galvin is Associate Professor at the University of Chicago.Edward Gauvin is a translator, writer, and independent scholar .Aubrey Gabel is Assistant Professor of French at Columbia.This event is co-sponsored by Columbia Maison Française and the Barnard College Comparative Literature and Translation Studies.
