Josephine Oxley, a curator
for English Heritage, claimed that there is reluctance to lend items to museums in France because of fears over how they will be treated. "They've got a
history of damaging items or putting them in a cupboard and forgetting where
they've put them." The founder of leading art market website Artprice
Thierry Ehrmann
commented:
“Foreign institutions know France does not by any means run things in a modern
way and they are very afraid of lending us their art.”
A bid by the French national
railway SNCF to build the first high-speed tracks in the United States is
running into resistance from Holocaust survivors because of the company's role
in transporting Jews to Nazi death camps. Between 1941 and 1944, 3,000 wagons
-- originally designed for the transportation of cattle -- were used by the
SNCF to transport Jews to Nazi death camps. Protestors and legislators want the
SNCF to formally apologize for its role in the war, give full access to its
records and make reparations. The SNCF has argued that it had no control over
operations when France was under Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944 and was
under orders to transport Jews to death camps.
The legality of France’s
crackdown on Roma migrants was thrown into doubt Wednesday when a report from
the European Commission said that French law lacked minimum safeguards required
by the European Union to protect deportees. The United Nations and immigrant
advocacy groups have criticized France for breaking up camps of Roma migrants
and returning them to Romania and Bulgaria. France defended its actions,
accusing Romania of not doing enough to integrate its Roma minority.
Flammarion will publish a
book
by Besma Lahouri about French
first lady Carla Bruni which a source says “contains explosive revelations
about everything from Carla's relationship with secret lovers to plastic surgeons.”
In her wild youth, Bruni was linked with men such as Mick Jagger and Eric
Clapton.
France's Labour Minister Eric
Woerth, after weeks of denying he begged a state honour for his wife's
employer, admitted he wrote to Nicolas Sarkozy backing the award for financial
manager Patrick de Maistre.
The
swan-necked beauty has reigned at the nexus
of French fashion, finance, culture, and society for half a century. Vanity
Fair chronicles
six decades of haut
monde iconoclasm.
French author and
screenwriter Emmanuel Carrère’s
chronicle of a trip to a remote, ruined village in Russia is quirky,
verging on incomprehensible, and
yet, in the end, Carrère brings the whole pastiche to sharp focus with a few
jarring truths and a moment of great beauty. You leave its last pages with a
deep appreciation for life.
A show of outlandish
sculptures by a cult Japanese artist Takashi Murakami
in the Chateau of Versailles has enraged traditionalists who
say it dishonours France's past. A petition has gained more than
3,500 signatures. The museum's director, former culture minister Jean-Jacques
Aillagon, dismissed the protests "from very conservative circles."
The Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences announced last week that French film director Jean-Luc Godard
would be given an honorary Oscar at a non-televised ceremony in November, along
with Eli Wallach and film preservationist Kevin Brownlow. But Godard, who
famously hates the establishment and Hollywood pretense, seems indifferent. The
media reports he could not be found for comment. “Godard … pisses everyone
off,” writes Salon.
France’s League for the
Protection of Birds says the French state does nothing to enforce an EU ban
protecting the migrating songbirds called ortolans. It estimates French poachers
kill 50,000 each year. The ortolan is a delicacy which sells for hundreds of
dollars to gourmands who gobble the roasted birds whole.
French filmmaker Alain
Corneau who leapt to international notice with the 1991 hit ''Tous les Matins
du Monde''
died of cancer
overnight on August 29, 2010. He was 67. Corneau got his start in cinema as the
assistant of Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras, and made more than a dozen films.
His latest, ''Love Crime,'' opened in France in mid-August.
Iranian state media called
France's first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy a ''prostitute'' on Aug. 30, 2010,
reflecting anger over her defense of
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman who faced death by stoning
for adultery.
Jacques Guérin, a Parisian
perfume magnate, was obsessed with the works of Marcel Proust. In 1929 he met
Proust's family and, through bribery and kindness, amassed a collection of
Proust's belongings, notebooks, letters, and manuscripts, saving them from
destruction. An interview with author
Lorenza Foschini.
Persuaded they held the key to
great treasure and were targets of a Masonic plot, members of the aristocratic French
de Vedrines family turned over their lives, fortune, and ancestral chateau to a
shadowy “grand master.” Then came captivity, torture and a bizarre escape. A
tale of cult abuse, or simply the crazy vagaries of inbred French nobility?
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