VINGT Paris Magazine

Festival La Route Du Rock

Text: Aidan Mac Guill  Image: Stephane Lecoq

Held in and around the picturesque walled seaside city of St. Malo in Brittany, about two hours from Paris by train, La Route Du Rock is a laid back music festival that has a reputation for showcasing exciting artists on the verge of the big-time, alongside big-name headliners. Over the years it has played host to the likes of Grizzly Bear, Four Tet, Camera Obscura, Fuck Buttons, The Dodos, Sigur Rós, Animal Collective, The XX and Justice. This year marks the 20th birthday of the festival and the organisers have bagged a line-up of internationally renowned artists, including Massive Attack, The Flaming Lips and The National, to help them celebrate. Thirty bands in all will perform over the weekend on the beach, at the Fort de Saint-Pere, an 18th Century Vauban (Louis XIV's foremost military engineer, obviously) castle, and at Le Palais du Grand Large, all for the bargain basement price of €80.

Cinema En Plein Air 2010

Text: Aidan Mac Guill
Image: DR

The perennially popular Cinema En Plein Air has returned to the Parc De Villette, films will be projected onto a gigantic inflatable screen every night until the 22nd of August. The films are shown in their original language, with French subtitles, and start when the sun goes down. It's advisable to pack a picnic and get there early to guarantee some leg-room for the feature presentation. All screenings are free but a €7 deposit is required if you want to rent a deck-chair. The festival is in it's 20th incarnation, reflected in this year's theme - 'Being 20'. All the films revolve around the promise and frustration of youth in some way. That being said not all youth will be welcome - this is the first year age restrictions will apply to some screenings. Having endured an uncomfortable couple of minutes last year sitting next to a 5 year old child while watching a naked Viggo Mortensen stabbing another man in the eye during 'Eastern Promises', this writer cautiously welcomes the decision.

The Festival Sin Fronteras

Text: Nick Forrester

For over 12 years the Cabaret Sauvage has been hosting a variety of eclectic music. The Festival Sin Fronteras builds on the establishment’s commitment to highlight music, performances and cultures that may otherwise have remained unknown.  

Between July 16 and August 8 the festival offers four themed weeks: Latin America, Black Africa, the Transylvania and the Maghreb, with a variety of exhibitions, films and concerts.

FNAC Festival Indétendances from Friday 23rd July

Text: Aidan Mac Guill    Image: Marjorie Curty

Free music! Outdoors! In the sun! By the Seine! Every Friday and Saturday from 5pm outside the Hotel de Ville the good, decent, hard-working millionaires who run FNAC have stumped up the cash to erect a stage and organise concerts for the good, decent, hard-working public who spend too much of their money at FNAC. It's running as part of the now world-famous Paris Plages Summer Festival, whereby the a section of the banks of the Seine is pedestrianized for four weeks, and temporary beaches are created from the Louvre to Pont de Sully, at the Port de la Gare and along the Bassin de la Villette.

The music kicks off on Friday 23rd with 'Belgian Johnny Halliday' Arno, who will be performing his hits such as 'Oh La La La', 'Putain!Putain!' and 'Jive To The Beat'. He'll be joined by beardy French alt-country group La Maison Tellier (any group named after a Guy de Maupassant short-story can't be all bad), psycho-billy fiddle-playing Feloche and Baz-Baz, purveyor of Lebanese-influenced pop.

Soirees Nomades - July at the Fondation Cartier

Text: Aidan Mac Guill
Image: Rémi Vannier

As part of the Beat Takeshi Kitano exhibition 'Gosse de Peintre', the Fondation Cartier are offering a number of interesting cultural evenings in July under the title 'Soirees Nomades'.

Thursday July 1 sees  Aymeric Hainaux and Jérôme Game perform at the Departure Lounge. Hainaux, a French vocal artist also known for his graphic work, presents a vocal performance piece that “combines friction, heartbeats, beatbox, silence and dense sound.”  Expect to witness the human voice doing things you didn't think were possible. Jérôme Game is an associate professor of film studies and philosophy at the American University Paris, and has emerged in the past couple of years as an important young voice in the field of contemporary poetry. He is the recipient of a 'Mission Stendahl' genius grant given by the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, allowing him to travel to any country in the world to research a project. His style is described as using “superimposition and ellipsis to create effects of stammering, haste, and syncopation.” His reading of his own poetry will be accompanied by videos produced by Valérie Kempeneers.

Music Festival at Enghien-les-Bains

Text: Nick Forrester

The up market Parisian suburb of Enghien-les-Bains, on Lake Enghien, is famous for its smart Spa resorts, hotels and its spectacular lakeside casino. This July however, there is more to this leafy suburb than a expensive turn of the roulette wheel and astronomically priced drinks. Two festivals will be gracing the area offering a range of arts, international music and Jazz.

The Centre des Arts Enghien-les-Bains is only a short train ride from Gare du Nord and it is holding an arts festival between the 12th and 19th July. The Bains Numériques # 5 is a free, week-long festival of performances and installations which explore the relationship between the physical and digital world.

Days Off Festival

Text: Aidan Mac Guill    Image: Kevin Westenberg

It's summer, it's (finally) hot out, everyone is experiencing a strange and overpowering urge to drink beer from a plastic cup, it can only mean one thing: it's festival season. Of course the French have not immediately warmed to the charms of the festival: drinking the equivalent of a small vat of alcohol before breakfast, sun-burn, tents, UV paint, over-priced under-cooked burgers, waking up beside total strangers, and short-term memory loss. Indeed they've even attempted their own version of the music festival, which leaves out all of the above, and puts the focus instead on something called “music”. Case in point, the 'Days Off Festival'. Over eight nights a diverse array of groups will be performing in the beautiful Cite de la Musique at Parc de la Villette, and at the Salle Pleyel.

One of the highlights promises to be The Fitzcarraldo Sessions, a collaborative night of music and the brainchild of members of Paris based band Jack The Ripper. Their album 'We Hear Voices' featured the likes of Tindersticks' Stuart Staples, Joey Burns of Calexico, Phoebe Killdeer from Nouvelle Vague, Moriarty, Archive's Craig Walker and a joyous clamor of fiddle, oboe, drum, guitar, banjo and bass. Performing on the night will be Dominique A, Moriarty, Abel Hernandez, Walker and many more. Support comes from the excellent Patrick Watson and his Wooden Arms and the new wunderkind of French chanson Arnaud Fleurent-Didier, who's had critics name-checking Benjamin Biolay and Serge Gainsbourg in reviews of his latest 'La Reproduction'. Fleurent-Didier will perform a piece written especially for the festival.

In the Belly of Paris - Baltard, Les Halles de Paris

Text and photos by Omid Tavallai  The first time I set foot in Paris, it was at Les Halles. As a bewildered young backpacker without much of a clue, I'd exited the RER B out of Châtelet-Les Halles station and - turned around as one gets in said station – immediately went in the wrong direction in search of a hostel. I ended up on nearby Rue Saint-Denis, passing all the well-past-their-prime ladies of the night hawking their wares on the cobblestone street. Along the way, there were many jeunes banlieusards, the suburban youth who resembled American inner city youth, or as I liked calling them in my own California vernacular, "wannabe gangstas," attempting to look tough. I snaked my way around the area, eventually finding myself on an unlit street near a towering, gothic church, a throng of unkempt, dirty-looking clochards circling it as if seeking salvation.  It was not the Paris I expected, and when I finally did check into my hostel - barely meters away - I circled the area on the map I was handed by the front desk and wrote in big capital letters: AVOID.

Festival Paris Cinema from 3rd July

Text: Aidan Mac Guill 

Image: Paris Cinema

From the 3rd to the 13th of July the Paris Cinema International Film Festival will be taking over the city for your audio-visual delectation. This year there is a particular focus on Japanese cinema, with around 100 Japanese films being screened throughout Paris. The majority of screenings will be at the recession-friendly price of €5. Special guests of the festival will be the actress, activist and Francophile Jane Fonda, the French-American writer & director Eugene Green, divisive Indian-American writer and director M. Night Shyamalan and the almost offensively good-looking French actor and director Louis Garrel, son of the great Philippe Garrel .

MiSH MaSH This Thursday 17 June

 
MiSH MaSH is a one-off event this Thursday 17th June in the Bastille showcasing young visual artists and musicians from London and Berlin.

Defecting Grey from London will be playing an exclusive DJ set focusing on the current envelope-pushing dance music scenes in South London, Bristol, Glasgow and LA which, while constantly avoiding genre definitions through its various mutations, has collectively become known as Dubstep.  An undergraduate electronic music student at Bristol University in the UK, he has already worked across the spectrum, from playing classical violin for pop band Cajun Dance Party to creating interactive electro-acoustic sound installations. Expect fierce beats with a dash of the experimental.