Welcome to FrenchCulture.net – French culture for the English-speaking world.
About FrenchCulture.net
A few years ago, after I finished teaching French full-time, I thought it might be fun to start a course on the Culture of France. I began with French films, but to my initial surprise and subsequent delight, the course attracted some people who stayed for several more subjects.
I’m now turning that Culture of France course into a book and this website.
Read more About Culture of France.
Geography
” The weather is very pleasant if overcast, and we are headed for the coast through the forest to have a swim. We reckon that it would take us just over an hour of steady walking to get to the seaside. The hour goes by and no sign of the sandy beach. The conversation does not touch upon the fact that we appear to be going in a wide circle as we start to recognise some of the intersections we have met before. Even the birds seem to have gone quiet. A heavy silence prevails. A different route is tried with the same outcome: basically, we are lost.”
By Western European standards, France is a large country. From Brest in the West to Strasbourg in the East, the distance is about 1,000km. The gap between Dunkirk in the North and Nice in the South is also around 1,000km.
Read more about Geography.
History
“The textbooks used in the Hexagone were also the ones which students in the colonies were reading. Whether Berbere, Arab or Senegalese. There was a boy in my school in the 1950s whose name was Okoulov. His dad had been left behind after the end of the Second World War and forgotten by Stalin who liked to repatriate all his people to butcher them. He too, along with Meichman, Pietrovski and Mendes, had to accept that his ancestors were Gaulois.”
French history is made up of stories. When French children are introduced to it, it is often put together a bit here and a bit there but rarely as a continuum. It took me a long time to understand the relationships between the different sections which I had been presented with at school.
Read more about History.
Art
“The first time I saw the painting in the Musée d’Orsay, I was dumfounded. I had never heard of Bazille and certainly never seen any of his work. I just sat there in front of this large canvas and could not move. I must have been there a while because one of the attendants came to see if I was all right. I was and I wasn’t.“
While this chapter could start with the Cave Painters, Jewel Makers and Bone Sculptors of Prehistoric Times, very little is left of their art. Instead, I have chosen to begin with the artists who came on the scene shortly before or after the death of the great Petrarch (1314-1376).
Read more about Art.
Cinema and Culture
“This film- it takes place in Lebanon but could be in Ukraine or any other place- is as anti-war as can be and shows what intolerance does to people. If you don’t watch any other film I have put forward, please, watch this one.“
What I have put together is not the 100 best French films of the last 100 years. It is the list of films chosen by myself to entice people to watch pictures with a different perspective on a subject. The descriptive for each film includes the titles of the movies in both French and English, the year it first came out, the name of the director, a short narrative, a link to the trailer, an even shorter opinion, and a mark out of 10. The last two are entirely subjective and do not rely on a vast number of cinema goers. All films are available with subtitles via DVD or streaming. Alternatively, some television channels in the UK and Europe have programmed some of these movies. Finally, I would like to thank Joëlle and Dominique Gilles for their input in making the original selection.
I hope you enjoy some of the features on offer.
Read more about Cinema and Culture.
Colonialism and French Culture
On the surface the two photos above show the progress France has made on the road to integrating the peoples it conquered in the last two centuries and who, eventually, decided to make their lives in the country. The relatively high percentage of immigrants who have settled in the “Hexagone” appears to support this very positive point of view. However, nothing is as simple as it looks…
Read more about Colonialism and French Culture.