Vying for a prize in the Fipadoc international competition category in Biarritz in January 2019 is Oscuros y Lucientes. Madrid director Samuel Alarcon's second film digs into the mystery surrounding Goya's lost head. Despite the serious subject, Alarcon raised a few laughs during the film's French première. The body of the great Spanish artist was exhumed some 30 years after his burial in the French city of Bordeaux in 1828. The Spanish consul in the mid-19th century was having the emigré's rema...
Jan 24, 2019•5 min
Caravaggio in Rome: Friends and Foes is a compact yet intense exhibition running at The Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris. Some of the most important works of the early 17th-century Italian painter, as well as those of his peers and his disciples, are on display. The exhibition explores the painters' milieu, highlighting themes like music, games, romance and religion. RFI's Rosslyn Hyams speaks to Pierre Curie, curator of the Jacquemart-André Museum and co-curator of Caravaggio in Rome....
Jan 15, 2019•10 min
Paris's Maillol Museum was founded in 1995 by Dina Vierny, a model and close associate for 19th and 20th-century sculptor Aristide Maillol. It is currently showing the works of Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, along with several works by artists such as Maillol, Aguste Rodin and Germaine Richier. Interesting to compare. To listen to Rosslyn Hyams's radio report click on the arrow in the top right hand of the photo. Alberto Giacometti spent a lot of time in Paris, in his studio in Montparnasse, a...
Nov 15, 2018•10 min
An exhibition that is part of the French centenary commemorations for the end of World War I provides a fascinating historical and geographical eye-opener, centred on the peace treaties signed after the war and what came next in central and eastern Europe, as well as in the Middle East. The Museum of the Armies, set in Paris's imposing Invalides complex built in the 17th century under Louis XIV, has brought together rare documents and artefacts, parts of uniforms or weapons, propaganda tools lik...
Nov 07, 2018•10 min
At the National Drama Centre in Montreuil, a suburb east of Paris, director Mathieu Bauer's double-bill Nuit Américaine adapts two US movies for the stage. Bauer says it's like "diving into the history of cinema and of the US" at the same time. Click on the arrow in the top right-hand of the photo to listen to the RFI English Culture in France broadcast on 17 October 2018, and hear actors Clément Barthelet and Rémi Fortin talk about their experiences in the plays. Plays and literature are more o...
Oct 26, 2018•10 min
Rosslyn Hyams visits powerful exhibitions of photos taken in central and east Africa, mainly of refugees and internally displaced people near and on the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where long-awaited elections are slated for December 2018.
Oct 26, 2018•10 min
In this week's Culture in France, RFI's Rosslyn Hyams visits the Vaux le Vicomte Fait son Cinéma exhibition in the 17th Century palace and gardens near Paris. The grounds and rooms have featured in some 50 movies over the past half-century since opened to the public in 1968, a revolutionary year. Click on the arrow on the photo to hear the feature. US director Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2005) was shot in part at Vaux le Vicomte, as was French stage and film director Ariane Mnouchkine's Mo...
Oct 11, 2018•10 min
Culture in France this week climbs to a niche in the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in Paris, for a small but powerful exhibition about the life and times of Afro-American international actor, singer, rights campaigner, Paul Robeson. "Paul's influence, along with others, was massive, even if he's not talked about so much these days," remarks Paris-based US Opera Singer Howard Haskin. Paul Robeson and his wife Eslanda Goode, a scientist and rights campaigner, were part of a generation of Black...
Sep 19, 2018•10 min
America Great Again was a major section of one of the biggest photography conventions in the world, held in the picturesque southern French town of Arles. Rosslyn Hyams reports on the higlights of Les Rencontres d'Arle s, which runs until 23 September 2018. Listen to this week's Culture in France by clicking on the arrow on the photo. One of the biggest draws for photography fans, for history fans, for art fans, from all over the world, the 49th Rencontres d'Arles saw a six percent rise in the n...
Sep 13, 2018•10 min
Still a busy cosmopolitan city, Paris winds down in the summer. But in July the annual performing arts festival, Paris l'été, occupies some of the spaces vacated by schoolchildren and holidaymaking Parisians in public buildings and outdoors, including one of the municipal swimming pools. As if France's winning the football World Cup wasn't exciting enough, Paris was gearing up for the opening events in the Paris summer festival on the very day President Emmanuel Macron celebrated the victory wit...
Jul 19, 2018•10 min
A festival of cinema from the Middle East and Gulf, organised by, and at, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris has been revived. The 10-day Festival des Cinémas Arabe s programmed films from across the Arabic-culture countries, giving a boost to the Institute's regular cinema programme. At a lively ceremony at the Institut on 8 July, prizes rewarded emerging talents especially. The Festival des Cinémas Arabes awards at the Arab World Institute (IMA) in Paris were as follows: Fiction category: Jo...
Jul 19, 2018•10 min
The Avignon Festival is one of the biggest collective annual theatre events in Europe. The programme will see the whole spectrum of performing arts take place in and around the south-eastern French region. In this week's Culture in France, RFI's Rosslyn Hyams talks to festival director Olivier Py and some of the artists whose work has marked the first of the three week-long international showing.
Jul 11, 2018•10 min
The Champs-Elysées film festival is underway at some of the many cinema halls on and around the famous Parisian avenue. The festival focus is American and French independent cinema. One of its highlights are its retrospectives. One of the special guests is British actor Tim Roth. A man of many faces, and even an ape's as RFI's Rosslyn Hyams reports in this month's Culture in France. Roth's full interview with RFI can be heard on RFI Soundcloud. The 7th Champs-Elysées film festival runs competiti...
Jun 13, 2018•11 min
In this week's Culture in France, Christiane Naffah-Bayle curator of an exhibition of official French tapestry called 'Au Fil du Siècle' - 'A Century-long-thread' talks about textile works which have recorded French history, art and social trends from 1918 up till today. Some of the best pieces in the collection of the famous Manufacture des Gobelins , from 1918 up to today, are showcased in the Galerie de Gobelins until September 2018....
Jun 08, 2018•10 min
Two Syrian cooks living in France offer a unique take on classic recipes from the Levant. Inspired by memories of their childhood in Aleppo and Damascus respectively, their food creations also bear a marked French influence. Myriam Sabet, owner and founder of Maison Aleph in the Marais neighbourhood of Paris opened her patisserie shop in July 2017. People from Tokyo, Los Angeles, Astana or Berlin stop by to taste her pastries and ice creams (only in summer), infused with Middle Eastern flavours ...
May 15, 2018•25 min
The Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, The Directors' Fortnight opens on Wednesday, 9 May, 2018 in Cannes. In its 50th anniversary year, RFI's Rosslyn Hyams looks at one the documentaries from the first Quinzaine in 1969, a documentary which harks back to the origins of the parallel programme.
May 09, 2018•10 min
Political posters with slogans like "It's forbidden to forbid" or "Under the paving stones, the beach" were a driving force in the May 68 Paris uprisings. The vast majority were designed and printed at Paris's Beaux-Arts (Fine Arts school) by the Atelier Populaire collective. Fifty years on, the school is showing that art work at the Images en Lutte exhibition. This exhibition on the visual culture of the far left from 1968 to 1974 includes posters, painting, sculptures, films, photos, tracts. I...
Apr 05, 2018•10 min
The Good Chance Theatre builds temporary theatres of hope promoting freedom of expression, creativity and dignity for everyone. It gives people the opportunity to express and empower themselves, to engage in dialogue and debate, and to experience the enriching and transformative power of art. They first set up in the Jungle in Calais in 2015. And now they've come to the French capital. Sophie Gorman has this report.
Mar 21, 2018•10 min
The Prisoner is a play co-written and directed by 93 year-old Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne. It's on until 24 March at the Bouffes du Nord Brook's old theatre where he also housed a theatre laboratory. In this week's Culture in France RFI's Rosslyn Hyams speaks to Brook about his play, and to Ery Nzaramba, who plays one of the main parts.
Mar 16, 2018•10 min
The Georges Pompidou Centre this spring is hosting three photographers from South Africa. David Goldblatt's critical work during apartheid and emigré South African photographers Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg , in their conceptual work. RFI's Rosslyn Hyams has this report.
Mar 13, 2018•10 min
From January 19th to February 22nd, a wide range of French feature length and short movies are available for viewing online via local platforms, free of charge in many regions of the world, or for a small fee in others. In this week's Culture in France, RFI's Rosslyn Hyams reports on the event called, 'My French Film Festival'. 'My French Film Festival' is France's annual, month-long online film festival. Last year seven million viewers across the world from the Americas to China were able to wa...
Jan 26, 2018•10 min
Culture in France presented by RFI's Rosslyn Hyams visits a revamped theatre space in the Palais de Chaillot opposite the Eiffel Tower in Paris where a Norwegian dance season opens this January.
Jan 18, 2018•10 min
La Monnaie de Paris , the French national Mint, on the banks of the River Seine in Paris, reopened this autumn... in style. RFI's Rosslyn Hyams reports on a new Parisian museum in this week's Culture in France.
Nov 23, 2017•10 min
