Our cultural favorites

Exposition

Art on the high seas

“In their time (7). A look at private collections”. Presented in Dunkirk, in the building of the Frac Grand Large, the Hauts-de-France regional contemporary art fund, the seventh edition of the triennial “In their time” offers an invigorating panorama of the art of our time. The works are all from private collections, which have lent 122 works by 111 artists. The selection was made by the director of Grand Large, Keren Detton, and Michel Poitevin, a great figure in the world of collectors. Few conceptual art, many paintings, particularly figurative, a register which currently seems to be regaining its prestige. Well-known names – Damien Hirst, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman – but above all emerging artists like the Syrian Miryam Haddad (photo) or the Kazakh Saule Suleimenova.

Guillaume Goubert

At Frac Grand Large (Dunkirk), until April 23

graphic novel

China-fried and macchiato

A season in Ethiopia. After his first drawn immersion at the UN, Karim Lebhour, correspondent in Addis Ababa from 2015 to 2017, introduces us to the many facets of Ethiopia: “economic miracle”, the underside of Chinafrica, rigged elections, rising tensions intercommunity… With a good dose of self-mockery, he also recounts, in the manner of Guy Delisle (Chronicles of Jerusalem), his life as an expatriate, between administrative setbacks, macchiato at the Sheraton and quest for French cheese. The drawings in ocher tones and with lively lines suggest the grandeur of the landscapes and the effervescence of the cities. This album offers an enlightening panorama of the country, while the civil war is brewing.

Marie Leveugle

By Karim Lebhour and Vincent Defait. Steinkis, 192 pages, €22

Movie theater

Always short!

The Short Film Festival. From March 15 to 21, short films are in the spotlight, and screened free of charge everywhere in France. Cinemas, media libraries, schools or houses for all offer screenings where you can choose from short films by Jacques Tati and Jean-Luc Godard, portraits of daring women, stories of exile, documentaries, a program thought out for children… More than 150 films are to be discovered to taste a different kind of cinema.

Aziliz Claquin

lafeteducourt.com

beautiful book

Zzzz in the subway

Legends (Volume 2). Recognized comic book author, Emmanuel Guibert likes to doodle in public places, where he discreetly “robs” his fellows. The Legends collection brings together these sketches, dedicated here to the sleeping people of public transport. These faces with closed eyes, abandoned, vulnerable, inspire the author with touching reflections on death. With these anonymous people he immortalizes, Emmanuel Guibert recalls his bereavements, which are also somewhat ours: the grandpa “both under the ground and in the sky”, the mother whose death makes “change of heart”… A very personal work, with universal accents.

Aziliz Claquin

Dupuis, 240 pages, €38

Classical music

Out of love for Rachmaninoff

Rachmaninoff in three stages. If he plays Beethoven, Schubert or Brahms with supreme elegance, the Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky has always had a singular love affair with the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff. He brings his virtuoso flame and a breathtaking mastery of colors with which the composer illuminates his scores. At the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, he is programming his entire work for solo piano: “Like Chopin, Liszt or Albéniz, Rachmaninoff created his own instrument, inventing a style, a sound, a universe of his own”, assures Nikolai Lugansky.

Emmanuelle Giuliani

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, March 14 and May 23, theatrechampselysees.fr

Podcast

Recognize, Repair, Reconcile

“Reparations”. Police accused of systemic racism, unbolted statues – even that of Victor Schoelcher -, and a word that arises from the demonstrations, “reparations”… What is there to be repaired and how to do it? Iris Ouedraogo and Adélie Pojzman-Pontay attended a historic trial at the Court of Appeal in Fort-de-France, Martinique, in October 2021: descendants of slaves from the West Indies had sued the State to ask for material repairs amounting to 200 billion euros. Without false suspense, the documentary series announces from the start that the trial has been lost. But it gives the two journalists the opportunity to retrace four centuries of slavery in France and to explain the anger and inequalities, social and economic, inherited from this past. We hear from academics, lawyers, psychologists, economists, elected officials and committed citizens convinced that the “3 Rs” (recognition, reparation, reconciliation) are the solution.

Stephanie Lambert-Marcinkowski

7 episodes of 30 minutes, on paradisomedia.io and platforms

Event

Poetry everywhere

The Spring of Poets. From this weekend until the end of March, it’s time to take a verse (or two)! For its 25th edition, the Spring of Poets travels around borders, a theme that resonates with the war in Ukraine. But not only that, as the borders are multiple and multifaceted, between childhood and adulthood, day and night, death and life… Meetings are springing up all over France, for all tastes, and surely near you: poetic cabaret in Douarnenez, declamation contest in Dunkirk, whispered poems in Bordeaux… Find the detailed program on the dedicated site.

Aziliz Claquin

printempsdespoetes.com

Theater for young audiences

At the source of memories

Since I was born. As a child, we remember things that then become blurred, the minutes following our birth like the first words deciphered in silence. Then everything goes away, fades away. Unless a six-year-old child decides to write his memoirs, like the character of David Lescot. What magic then to go up the river of these buried memories and to share the laughter of the youngest, enchanted to listen to the echo of their dreams and anger. With its cozy bed, its abandoned toys and its music, which is an accomplice to moods, this child’s room takes us on a poetic journey.

Beatrice Bouniol

From 6 years old.

On tour: from March 14 to 24 in Béthune (62), from March 29 to April 1 in Lieusaint (77), from April 11 to 14 in Caen (14)…

Theater

The old woman and our restlessness

Your mum. The title, half detached, half obsequious, already says a lot. “Your mom”, in Ehpad, which we talk about as if she was not in the room; “your mother” who leaves the shores of reason in relative indifference; “your mum” is basically our mum, the one we placed in an institution feeling a little guilty. The great talent of Jean-Claude Grumberg’s play – and of Wally Bajeux’s staging, all in veils and intimacy – is not only to leave us in peace in the face of this reality, it is also to catch the elusive: everything that, even between the walls of the nursing home, makes life. Laughter, derision, tenderness, love, everything that is still shared. The actress Colette Louvois brings an extraordinary accuracy. The show highlights, finally, what cannot be shared. And introduces another tragic within the tragic, by asking a vertiginous question: how to preserve the memory of the Shoah when the last witnesses disappear?

Marine Lamoureux

At Studio Hébertot (Paris), until March 29, studiohebertot.com

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