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Al Pacino pulls out of ‘Nazi’ play in Denmark

American acting legend Al Pacino has pulled out of a Danish stage adaptation of ’Hunger’ because of the Norwegian author’s enthusiasm for Nazi Germany.

Al Pacino pulls out of 'Nazi' play in Denmark
Al Pacino will not be coming to Copenhagen as planned. Photo: Colourbox
Oscar winner Al Pacino, best known for playing Michael Corleone in The Godfather films and Tony Montana in Scarface, had signed up to be the narrator in the play ‘Hunger’, which was scheduled to premier at the Bergen International Festival in May 2017. 
 
It would then go on to play at Copenhagen’s Aveny-T theatre and at Aarhus Theatre. 
 
The play is based on the dark psychological novel by Norway’s Knut Hamsun, but Pacino pulled out of the project at the last minute because of Hamsun’s enthusiastic support for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany
  
“It is correct, he jumped at the last moment because he couldn’t come to terms with Knut Hamsun's support for the German occupiers and Nazism. We must respect that,” Jon Stephensen, Aveny-T’s manager, told BT. 
 
Hamsun was a pioneer of psychological literature, and was an influence on writers as diverse as Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway. 
 
However, during the Germany occupation of Norway, when he was 80 years old, he became a firm supporter of the German war-effort, getting to know many of the highest ranking Germany officers, including Joseph Goebbels. 
 
After Hitler’s death he published an obituary in which he described the German leader as “a preacher of the gospel of justice for all nations”. 
 
Aveny-T aimed to film Pacino over a day and then use 3D animation to project him onto the stage. 
 
“It would have been really been great if it had succeeded,” Stephensen said. “I have several times in the process thought that I was dreaming. It would have been massive if he had come to Copenhagen.”
 
Stephensen held out hope that the project would still go on without Pacino’s involvement.  

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PARIS

Top Paris theatre reopens as Covid occupy movement ends

French actors, stage technicians and other members of the performing arts ended a more-than-two-month occupation of the famous Odéon theatre in Paris on Sunday, allowing the show to go on after this week's easing of Covid-19 curbs.

Top Paris theatre reopens as Covid occupy movement ends
A picture taken on January 26, 2011 in Paris shows the facade of the Odéon theatre. LOIC VENANCE / AFP

The protesters took down the banners they had slung across the facade of the venue in the Left Bank as they left at dawn, leaving just one inscribed “See you soon”.

“We’re reopening!,” theatre director Stéphane Braunschweig exclaimed on the venue’s website, adding that it was “a relief and a great joy to be able to finally celebrate the reunion of the artists with the public.”

The Odéon, one of France’s six national theatres, was one of around 100 venues that were occupied in recent weeks by people working in arts and entertainment.

The protesters are demanding that the government extend a special Covid relief programme for “intermittents” — performers, musicians, technicians and other people who live from contract to contract in arts and entertainment.

READ ALSO: Protesters occupy French theatres to demand an end to closure of cultural spaces

With theatres shut since October due to the pandemic, the occupations had gone largely unnoticed by the general public until this week when cultural venues were finally cleared to reopen.

The Odéon, which was inaugurated by Marie-Antoinette in 1782, had planned to mark the reopening in style, by staging Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece “The Glass Menagerie”, with cinema star Isabelle Huppert as a former southern belle mourning the comforts of her youth.

But the protests scuppered the first five performances, with management saying the venue was blocked — a claim the protesters denied.

“What we wanted was for it (the performance) to go ahead, along with an occupation allowing us to speak out and hang our banners. We don’t want to stop the show,” Denis Gravouil, head of the performing arts chapter of the militant CGT union, said on Sunday.

Two other major theatres — the Colline theatre in eastern Paris and the National Theatre of Strasbourg — have also been affected by the protests.
 
France has one of the world’s most generous support systems for self-employed people in the arts and media, providing unemployment benefit to those who can prove they have worked at least 507 hours over the past 12 months.

But with venues closed for nearly seven months, and strict capacity limits imposed on those that reopened this week, the “intermittents” complained they could not make up their hours.

The government had already extended a year-long deadline for them to return to work by four months.

The “intermittents” are pushing for a year-long extension instead.

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