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CULTURE

12 festivals to enjoy in France in August 2023

If summer is festival season in France, then August is peak-time festival season. 

Published: 31 July 2023 17:30 CEST
12 festivals to enjoy in France in August 2023
The Rock en Seine music festival takes place in August. (Photo by Anna KURTH / AFP)

Here is our pick of 12 events across the country that you may want to check out.

l’Eté à Pau

This one started at the end of July, but runs until August 5th, so we’re claiming it. If free concerts in an open air theatre are your thing, this is for you. Find out more, here.

Jazz au Phare

Head to the Atlantic coast, until August 3rd for some cool jazz at Saint-Clément-des-Baleines, on Île de Ré. Murray Head is performing on August 2nd. More details available here.

Salon Festival International de Musique de Chambre de Provence

The 31st Festival International de Musique de Chambre de Provence runs until August 5th, in Salon-de-Provence. More information here.

MiMa 

If puppets are your thing, MiMa – the International Festival of Puppet Art, held from August 4th to August 7th in the mediaeval town of Mirepoix, Ariège – is for you. More details here.

Festival du Chant de Marin

Did you love the Wellerman, which took social media by storm a while ago? Then the Sea Shanty festival, in the Breton resort of Paimpol, is for you. This year’s event runs from August 4th to August 6th, with performances from 160 groups on seven stages, while the port is filled with 200 boats. More information here.

Festival Interceltique de Lorient

Sticking in Brittany for a 10-day festival (August 4th to 13th) that pretty much does exactly what it says on the bodhran. More than 100 shows on stages across the Morbihan coastal town celebrate anything and everything Celtic. Artists at this year’s event include Irish folk group Clannad, The Kilkennys, and Usher’s Island. Full details here.

Festival du Bout du Monde

The darkly named End of the World Festival takes place from August 4th to August 6th at Landaoudec Prairie on the Crozon Peninsula in Brittany, a few hundred yards from the wild Atlantic ocean. Franz Ferdinand and Suzanne Vega are among the acts in a packed showcase for a festival that’s nowhere near as gloomy as its name suggests. More here.

Cabaret Vert

Somewhere in the region of 125,000 spectators are expected to descend on the Ardennes’ town of Charleville-Mézières between August 16th and 20th, to catch the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Christine and the Queens, Cypress Hill, Calvin Harris, and – proving the line-up isn’t all C-related – Yungblud, PLK and Dropkick Murphys. More details available here.

Woodstower

Fans of rap and electro rejoice. The 22nd annual Woodstower festival, near Lyon, takes place between August 23rd and 27th. More information here.

Delta Festival

In fact, there’s a little bit of a dilemma for electro fans, as the Delta Festival is in Marseille at exactly the same time as Woodstower, and features an equally eclectic line-up. Details here.

Rock en Seine

If rock’s more your thing, Billie Eilish, Florence + the Machine, The Strokes, Placebo, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are among the acts lined up for this year’s annual Rock en Seine festival at Domaine national de Saint-Cloud from August 23rd to August 27th. Details here.

V and B Fest

Louise Attaque, DJ Snake, Doria, Shaka Ponk and Damso are among a musically wide-ranging list of stars at the V and B Fest in Craon, in the Mayenne. More here.

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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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