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Unspoken Rules of Paris: L'amour, bien sûr!

Image: Robert Doisneau's "Les Amoureux"

Text: Guillermo Martinez de Velasco 

You know that moment right before you jump into a pool that you know is filled with cold water? That strange mixture of drive and fear that takes over as soon as you take that first step. On one side is the idea of you, in there, being youthful and wet-like. Of you in an Evian advert. On the other; there is the image of your toe, the big one, the one you dipped in the water earlier, the one that made you have second thoughts.

This is exactly how I felt when I met Morgane. Or rather, when she walked past me on the Pont Neuf (I know, right?). I was walking towards the Rive Droite. She was coming from it. Her curly hair got tangled in her scarf, in a good way, if this is possible. The bridge was a catwalk and at the other end stood a grid of cameras. To say she walked past me would be an exaggeration. She actually walked across me, across the bridge. Not a word, not even the slightest hint that she didn't feel like there was no one else there.

But I was used to attractive Parisiennes acting like men are invisible, or Lepers, or invisible Lepers. So, In a completely unorthodox show of confidence, I looked at her (but not in the creepy sideways look kind of way). I made eye contact and made sure she was aware of it. My eyes followed hers until she let out a smirk. "Did you see that girl?" asked my friend Clément sarcastically. My breath was freezing in front of my face, "I made sure she saw me".

Mia Funk: Meta Art

Nuavecabacus 2012 © Mia Funk, acrylic, gouache, antique wallpaper

Images: Mia Funk                                        
Text:  Susie Kahlich 

Talking to the artist Mia Funk is a slightly unsettling experience, like being surprised by fizz in a drink you thought was flat.  It’s a bit of a shock at first, but then you realize it’s a pleasant shock and yes, you will have another glass of that, please.

And that’s how it is with Ms. Funk. Very direct and extremely articulate, she throws you right off balance the second she starts speaking, but leaves you wanting more.  An Irish-German Chinese-American, she physically resembles the Chinese side of her family but, although born and raised in Seattle, her 10 years in Ireland and over a decade in France has inflected her American vocabulary with a hybrid accent that comes across as vaguely German. 

And for all her intensity and intelligent observations about art, history, film, pop culture and literature, there exists an underlying social satire that is dark and deliciously addictive yet playful, like a soda designed by Edward Gorey: exotic and mysterious, probably poisonous, but delightful nonetheless.  In other words, an unexpected fizzy drink.

January Film Events

Image: Susie Hollands
Text: Susie Kahlich

VINGT Paris Launches Monthly Film Series! VINGT Paris launched its monthly film series at Le Beverly Cinéma Tuesday night with Melody Gilbert’s Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness, an award-winning documentary about the urban explorer movement in the US, Scotland, France and around the world.  Did you miss it? Get on the mailing list for the next screening by sending us an email with film group in the subject line.

VINGT Paris Monthly Film Series
Subject: “film group”
news@vingtparis.com

 

Projo Collectif continues its Apéros-Projos with a whole new year of movie-going and networking at Café de Paris.  Selections from the Festival Clermont-Ferrand starts the year with off with a bang. 6 January at 21h00.

Au Café de Paris
158 rue Oberkampf 75011 Paris
Métro: Ménilmontant

 

35 Parisian New Year's Resolutions

Image: I Still Shoot Film

Text: Guillermo Martinez de Velasco

1-Don't go to the Eiffel Tower on New Year's Eve

2-Actually do that thing where I pick an area of the Louvre per week, and visit it very attentively

3-Buy a bicycle and throw away my carte imagineR

4-Actually go to Château de Vincennes, not just talk about going

5-Promise to go to one of the presentations/lectures/workshops at Beaubourg or the Fondation Cartier per month

6-Don't cheap out on French Vogue or Egoïste

7-Finally get my membership for the Hôtel-de-Ville Library and The Bibliothèque Fornier / Go study in these libraries

8-Get photographed by The Sartorialist, at least

9-Volunteer at Shakespeare and Co. (But also check out the Abbey Bookstore)

10- Promise to learn more about wines, it's embarrassing that you always go for the 4-5 euro Bordeaux

Creative Growth: REVEALED

Text + images (from current show): Anne S. Ditmeyer

Headquartered in Oakland, California, Creative Growth is a non-profit arts organization working to bring attention to outsider artists, including artists with disabilities, self-taught artists and artists from around the world. The works are often whimsical, unimaginable (in the detail and obsession) and striking for the very art that it is not, along with the unique stories of each artist.

Creative Growth has had a presence in Paris for the past couple years with Director Tom di Maria and Gaela Fernandez running the gallery. Formerly run under the name Galerie Impaire, the gallery no longer has a full-time home, but rather holds special exhibitions around the city, along with a showroom that is accessible by appointment only. To parallel one of the largest events Creative Growth Oakland holds each year with their holiday show, Paris is hosting its own holiday show, REVEALED, at Galerie Drylewicz (18 rue Provence, 9ème–by appointment only after Christmas) now through January 12, 2012.

VINGT Paris Monthly Cinema Series

Paris PREMIERE

URBAN EXPLORERS: INTO THE DARKNESS

at Le Beverly Cinéma

3 January 2012 @ 21h00

Videos

 

“URBAN EXPLORERS” SUBCULTURE IS THE FOCUS OF A NEW DOCUMENTARY TO SCREEN AT Le Beverly Cinéma in Paris

Director Melody Gilbert's feature documentary features thrill-seeking urban explorers
from Paris and around the world.

In partnership with VINGT Paris Magazine, URBAN EXPLORERS: INTO THE DARKNESS will screen at Le Beverly Cinéma on 03 January 2012 at 21h00.  “What better place to screen a film about urban exploration than Le Beverly, the last true porn theatre in Paris?” says Susie Kahlich, editor of the film section at VINGT Paris Magazine, organisers of the evening’s screening.  American director Melody Gilbert (www.frozenfeetfilms.com) will introduce the film and answer questions during a Q & A after the screening, along with several Parisian Urban Explorers featured onscreen.  

Ms. Gilbert spent three years following “urban explorers” around the globe to uncover the secrets of this unusual and growing international subculture. The film also features some surprisingly beautiful photography from around the globe. The feature-length doc is directed, produced and shot by Ms. Gilbert.  Some sections of the film were shot under Paris in the forbidden catacombs.

C'est L'Amour: Last Porn Theatre in Paris (Is More than Just Porn)

Images: Meghann Lee, Susie Kahlich    
Text: Brian Clark

Upon taking a seat at Le Beverley Cinéma, the first thing I notice is that all of the patrons except my girlfriend and I choose to sit at the back of the theatre.  I immediately realize our blunder – after all, why come to “couples night” at the last true “Cinéma X” in Paris and then sit in a place where you have to turn around to check out the activity of all the other couples?

By the time we realize our mistake, the lights have gone down and there is a mid-30’s man on screen trying to convince a lonely French woman to take off her clothes while he films her.  He doesn’t have much trouble.  Soon the duo is outside a log cabin having sex in every possible position.  It seems like an awkward moment to stand up and relocate to  a cluster of other couples, so we instead opt to make out and take turns stealing glances toward the back of the theatre. 

A Letter to George Whitman

Image:  Boiling Point Photography

Text: Guillermo Martinez de Velasco Escobedo

I don't think it would be polite of me to state the number of hours I've spent at Shakespeare and Company. Surely, I'm not the only Parisian who has spent ridiculous amounts of time in that nook that hangs around to the side of Nôtre-Dame. This tiny Anglophone bookstore, to me, was something that I could rely on as a new arrival to the city, and even now, in times of hectic trouble I run to Shakespeare and Company. There's something about those stacks of bound pages, some dusty, others pristine and shiny, all surrounding me that makes me feel at home. This is something I can get used to. I can walk in, and, as soon as my nose picks up on the wood, the pages, and the ink from my favourites: Beckett, Kerouac and Miller; I let go.

I did not see the bookstore live throughout the decades, mind you. I only discovered Paris a year ago. However, I heard the stories: Of how you stored your Francs in-between the pages of the top back library room and then forgot about their exact location. Of how you'd met all of my heroes and helped create some others. I never had the chance to meet you. Although as a bookstore volunteer, I almost used your bathroom one day. And your daughter Sylvia, I think might've known me only as the guy who rearranged the books on the staircase so as to make room for a magic section. I guess that's what happens when you create something that benefits so many people. I can imagine it being impossible to keep up with everyone. But I never really cared. I knew the amazing creative figure that was Mr. Whitman, always upstairs.

“What happens when you can't fit any more books on the shelf?” I asked on one of my first days as a volunteer. “Oh, just find a spot on top and cram them in there” was the answer provided. The way Shakespeare and Co. runs, is not like any other bookstore I've seen before or since. It is a place that runs on unorthodoxy and kindness. I cannot thank you enough for this vital part of Paris. If you follow a straight line, you come across the city's pillars. Hôtel de Ville, Nôtre-Dame and of course, that physically crooked bookstore of yours. I've become a better writer thanks to Saturday's 'Other Writers' Club', to Sunday's 'Instant Writing Workshop', to Monday's guest speaker, and to the books that I occasionally was paid in for my shelfing and re-shelfing. The testament of what your labour has done for English literature can be found in every contemporary bookstore and school curriculum on the globe. Your little bookstore on the Left Bank meant and means, the world to countless people like me.

Thank You George.

L'Invention du Sauvage at the Musée du Quai Branly

Image: Musée du Quai Branly

 

Text: Rooksana Hossenally

 

Just this morning as I got on the metro at Stalingrad I regretted it as soon as stepped inside the closing doors. A tall black man dressed in a long leather coat wearing freshly-shined brown loafers was yelling at no one in particular that black people are not dirty and that they’re not animals, and that white people are not above black people. Whether this man was drunk or on a come down from the night before, or simply having a random yell at lay metro passengers, is beside the point. What it does however underline is a deep-rooted problem in our society that has existed ever since Columbus brought the ‘Other’ back to the Western world from his various travels all over the globe.

 

How did we come to such hatred and discrimination of the Other? That is the question that the latest exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly, 'L’Invention du Sauvage', seeks to take apart and analyse. The curator of the exhibition, Lilian Thuram has received great acclaim for seeking to go beyond the 21st century surface of the problem.

 

Twinkle and Tinsel: Christmas Displays in Paris

Text + Images: Anne S. Ditmeyer

With the recent deluge of rainy days in Paris, it seems that a wet Christmas is more likely than a white Christmas this year. But despite the weather not cooperating with the season of joy, there are still plenty of ways to get into the holiday spirit, that continue into the new year.

Image above: Karl Lagerfeld dolled up in the windows of Printemps.

For me, it's not the holidays until I visit the grands magasins. While I suppose most people go for the shopping, I go for the windows. With Galeries Lafayette and Printemps next to each other, one can't help but feel like each year it's a bit of a competition as to who can out do the other's window display. (Printemps has won the past two years in my mind).