What’s The Buzz ?
The European Independent Film Festival, Europe’s premiere event for independent filmmakers, will kick-off the eighth edition of the festival with a Launch Party on Wednesday March 13th, 2013 at Le Gibus nightclub
in Paris.
Tiwayo
Skarah-B
Representing a complete gamut of film genre from feature films, short films, documentaries, animations
and experimental works to student films, ÉCU provides an ideal platform for the promotion of independent, creative cinema.
Since its inception eight years ago, ÉCU has proved to be a discovery point for many talented independent filmmakers: several films from this years Official Selection will make their World Premieres, while more than a dozen others will make European Premieres. As a result of ÉCU’s commitment to the discovery, promotion and projection of independent films, it is often referred to as the European version of the Sundance Film Festival .
The ÉCU 2013 Launch Party will be held at Le Gibus, 18 Rue du Faubourg du Temple, March 13th, 2013 from 19.30pm-2am.
For more information about ÉCU and a full list of the 2013 Official Selection, go
to www.ecufilmfestival.com.
And so the Masters students in European and International Business Law at Université Paris Dauphine wrestle with definitions, distinctions and distractions as we try to translate Lost for Words into French. The attention to detail is similar if not the same that is necessary when drafting a contract, a negotiation strategy, a constitution, a legal treatise. They are then called upon to give ten minute presentations on European Union citizenship (2013 is after all the European Year of Citizens). These ten minutes are suddenly reduced to two minutes; some students are asked to present in English, some in French. One Russian student is called upon to make her presentation in Russian, but protests as she has prepared her notes in French. She thinks a little and then says that she will speak for 5 minutes in Russian and will summarise her points in both French and English. That’s called initiative; when you see that in action and when you see people think, innovate, create, it is a reminder that teaching is an honour. It is also where you learn the most, if you give students a chance to participate. At one point, one student says that she can imagine how she would stage a trial without words but has some difficulty explaining what she means, that is until two days later when we are in a dance studio. There I see imagination in action as we run through exercises adapted from dance / theatre; we try out a few mise-en-scènes that I invent until the students take over. During the trial without words, members of the jury suddenly turn their backs on the prosecutor. There it is again: initiative and creativity. These students are smart. They have alot to contribute about discussions about human rights in the EU, within the class room, in a dance studio and beyond. Within one week, I have seen a transformation from reticence and a little resistance to the courage and the confidence it takes to participate in class as a right to reply. In so doing, I have learned to understand how diverse the perception of law and human rights may be and how a participatory, collaborative model of teaching, fusing analysis and art may awaken the Gesamtkunstwerk in all of us.
This is what you do. You forget to change to the number 2 metro line that is the shortest way home as you smile back at a sign that says that this station is called Bonnes Nouvelles. Nice touch, you think but these words do not hit the spot. Patience is this hour’s virtue as you finally get up, mind a gap, head for a flight of stairs, then an escalator, then trample a few more stairs than are strictly necessary until you emerge through a wind tunnel with your back to what you came all this way to see. Its eyes bore through that center between your shoulder blades right through to the solar plexus and out the other side as you turn very slowly to savour the morsels of each second that bring you one step closer to seeing as believing that I think therefore it must be: Opéra Garnier.
Rendez vous at the Hôtel Amour in the 9th for a working breakfast that passes without incident but for the fact that I confuse Chile with Argentina as we speak about the rule of law as games of hide and seek. P. just in from Buenos Aires talks about a law paper that I am feigning interest in as ever since he mentioned the tango performance he saw, my attention is a disordered disarray of trade deficits. All work and what’s with the no-play date that this week turned out to be? Paris? City of Lights and Je ne regrette rien? I start to stifle a giggle that I disguise as a yawn, hoping that even though I have been here for a week, I can still get away with that wonderful excuse called jet lag or décalage horaire. P. starts to explain how to get to Charles de Gaulle airport and I could not care less as I am thinking, maybe I’ll just get a cab…you know, just stride out onto the street and stick my arm out as the understudy to the Empress of the Upper East Side. P. looks terrified and says that I will be ruined if I get caught up in les embouteillages and so I follow his precise instructions and somewhere in some metro station between here and there, I come across a group of garulous Russian musicians, all 20 of them, playing music that try as I might, I could never live up to. But gladly would I face that music and dance, only too happy to oblige. But that was before Sasha, that hiatus time of intransigent insouciance before the brutal before my first coffee awakening one monday morning weeks later when he picked me up to take me to a dental appointment to remind me of how a man must – not may – accompany a woman. As Sasha drives off, abandoning me to the sorry state of affairs that will compose the rest of my life après Sasha at the corner of Park and 57th Street, I realise, that we will never always have Paris, this Russian cab driver and I. And you can look that story up by author, title, genre, whatever it takes, it’s all the same: Tragedy. 
Maria Zubova, Media Writer, Music
Attention! New star on the stage!
There is time for a second cup of coffee after I have said good-bye to the young painter who shivers beneath a mexican blanket and several layers of winter worse for wear clothing. I forgot to take his photograph as promised. Something tells me that he did not forget to remember. I am drawn to a Brasserie at the end of the road where only men stand in attendance. The man who serves me a so-so coffee calls me Madame; only hours ago, I was Mademoiselle to a man up the road who served me a croissant and a glass of orange juice. The many ages of Paris.
