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CULTURE

Cinema: English-subtitled French films to screen in Charente and Normandy

The Paris-based cinema club Lost in Frenchlation has announced plans to expand to other French towns starting in December, offering more English speakers in France the opportunity to experience France's cinema culture. .

Published: 14 November 2022 17:02 CET
Cinema: English-subtitled French films to screen in Charente and Normandy
Photo by Alex Litvin on Unsplash

For the past seven years, Lost in Frenchlation, a company that regularly screens of recent French film releases with English subtitles, has given anglophones living in Paris the opportunity to access to French culture – and to meet others in the same situation.

After recently expanding to Biarritz, Lost in Frenchlation also announced plans to offer screenings in Caen, Normandy and Marthon, a small town on the Charente – Dordogne border so that English speakers in those towns can also enjoy French cinematic culture.

Screenings in Caen and Marthon will start in December, and they will be conducted in a similar manner to those in Paris – events are typically preceded with drinks before the start of the film.

READ MORE: Six French films with English subtitles in Paris in November

Here are the upcoming events outside of Paris:

Biarritz

In partnership with Royal Biarritz, Lost in Frenchlation will put on the movie “Un Beau Matin.”

The film tells the story of a young single mother raising her 8-year-old daughter and simultaneously caring for her father who was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease. While trying to find her father a care home, she runs into a married friend and they begin an affair.

The screening will take place on Monday, November 14th at 8pm at Cinéma Le Royal, located at 8 Av. du Maréchal Foch, 64200 Biarritz.

Tickets range from €4.50 – €7, and they can be found on this website.

The other upcoming screening in Biarritz will be the film “Simone, Le Voyage du Siècle.”

The film is a biopic about Holocaust survivor Simone Veil, one France’s most prominent women during the 20th century. Covering Veil’s life story, the film will dive into her childhood and her major political battles, such as the fight for abortion rights in France.

Vogue has called it “one of the most anticipated films of the year.”

The film will be screened on Monday, November 28th at 8pm, with drinks starting at 7:30pm. The film will also be shown at Cinéma Le Royal, 

Tickets will also range from €4.50 – €7 and can be found on this website. 

Caen

Lost in Frenchlation will begin screening films in Caen this December, with its first film being “Saint Omer” by French female director Alice Diop.

The film tells the story of a novelist named Rama, as she attends the trial of a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. Over the course of the trial, as she listens to the woman’s testimony and the stories of other witnesses, Rama finds herself questioning her own previously-held convictions.

In collaboration with Café des images, the film will be shown on Wednesday, December 14th at the Café Polyglotte, which is dedicated to exploring cultural diversity and facilitating the discovery of foreign languages.

The address is 4 square du théâtre, 14200 Hérouville-Saint-Clair, and participants are invited to join in pre-drinks at 7pm, and the screening will begin at 9pm.

Lost in Frenchlation will announce other screenings for the month of December, specifically those for Marthon, in the coming weeks. 

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CULTURE

Can Costner lead the revenge of France’s much-mocked Kevins?

In 1990s France, amidst the Pierres and the Jean-Claudes, a Hollywood hero with all-American good looks inspired a new name craze.

Published: 19 May 2024 16:52 CEST
Can Costner lead the revenge of France's much-mocked Kevins?

The era of the Kevin — or Kev-een as the French pronounce it — had arrived, ushered in by the passions unleashed by a moustachioed Kevin Costner in his epic directorial debut, “Dances with Wolves”.

Suddenly, little Kevins were to be found the length and breadth of France.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing for these young ambassadors of Americana.

As Kevin Costner, now aged 69, prepares for his much-anticipated comeback at the Cannes Film Festival, AFP looks at how his French namesakes went from hero to zero and back again:

Je m’appelle Kevin

Celtic in origin, hailing from the Irish name “Caoimhin” after a hermit monk who lived in a stone cell in a glacial valley, the Kevin craze was sparked by not one but two huge Hollywood films.

In 1990 two million French people flocked to see the antics of a young boy called Kevin battling to defend his family home from burglars in “Home Alone”.

A year later, “Dances with Wolves”, which scooped seven Oscars, topped the French box office, pulling in a whopping seven million viewers.

The impact on birth certificates was immediate — that year Kevin was the most popular boy’s name in France, chosen for just over 14,000 newborns, according to data compiled by AFP.

The wave continued with over 10,000 baby Kevins a year until 1995 when it dipped to some 8,000 and progressively dwindled thereafter.

Mocked and shamed 

By the time the Kevins hit adolescence in the early 2000s, Costner’s star power had faded and the name had become shrouded in stigma, associated with lower classes picking exotic-sounding names drawn from pop culture.

Sociologist Baptiste Coulmont studied the social determinism of French names by comparing the names with the childrens’ exam grades.

Between 2012-2020 four percent of Kevins received the top “very good” grade for the baccalaureate exam taken at the end of high school, compared with 18 percent for the classic bourgeois name Augustin.

For director Kevin Fafournoux, who grew up in what he calls an “ordinary” family in central France and is making a documentary called “Save the Kevins”, the name “spells redneck, illiterate, geek, annoying” for many in his country.

“All this has impacted my life and that of other Kevins, whether in terms of our self-confidence, professional credibility or in relationships,” he says in its trailer.

In Germany, which also saw a wave of Kevins in the early 1990s, the negative stereotypes conferred on parents who give children exotic-sounding names from other cultures has a name: Kevinismus.

“Kevin is not a name but a diagnosis,” said one teacher scathingly in a 2009 article by Die Zeit newspaper about little Kevins, Chantals and Angelinas being labelled problem children.

Shedding the stigma

As the years pass, Kevins have become doctors, academics, politicians and much more — and attitudes have shifted.

“There are tens of thousands of Kevins in France, they are everywhere in society and can no longer be associated with one background,” Coulmont told The Guardian newspaper in an interview in 2022.

That year, two Kevins were elected to parliament for the far-right National Rally (RN).

“Will the Kevins finally have their revenge?” asked Le Point magazine.

The RN’s president is himself a fresh-faced 28-year-old, who grew up in a high-rise housing estate on the outskirts of Paris. He also carries a name with clear American overtones: Jordan Bardella.

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