Things I Paid for at Gunpoint Today (vol 2): A Festival of a Buncha French Movies
aka...
Diverciné: a World View of la Francophonie
(http://www.culturel.org/festival_francophonie/introduction.htm)
"It is a unique opportunity for Canadians to discover the works of filmmakers from various Francophone countries, which are rarely screened in Canada."
Diverciné is a film festival Heritage Canada (you) helped pay for, dedicated to raising awareness of international francophones, and explaining via character-driven explorations of deep-rooted international and cultural crises, exactly why we need french subtitles on every cereal box.
"But Nick!" you're no doubt asking. "I'm an ordinary Canadian! How does awareness of films I'll never see from various poor-as-dirt french speaking nations affect my life in the slightest, when what I really need is a new iPod battery, brake cables for my Saturn, and citrus from foreign lands to ease this damnable scurvy?"
I would say there are no easy answers, and I'm sorry for the scurvy. Then I would tell you that a sad, iron-clad reality of the art world is that if you gotta subsidize it, nobody wanted it to begin with. Unfortunately, the perception among many is that without state-sponsored art, high culture as we know it would promptly vanish into the airwaves, devoured by the insatiable cultural maws of Simon Cowell and Ben Mulroney, and the more equine cultural maw of Julia Roberts.
Besides, without state-sponsored art, we're all liable to forget what Canadian culture is or who we are. We may very well wake up one morning thinking ourselves somewhere in Kabul, and wondering where's that wretched one-eyed servant-boy cripple with the cured goat meat already? Then we'd select a good sturdy stick and prepare to give that urchin a sound thrashing, until the wise-yet-stern visage of Peter Mansbridge materialized on our televisions, and suddenly everything was clear again.
It's important to know who we are. It's even more important that we're told! And what we apparently are is Canadians with an insatiable interest in french-speaking pockets of the globe heavily peopled with theater majors.
Sleep well.
What I would've preferred to have for my money:
-Criterion Collection dvd's
-Stainless steel German kitchen appliances
-Stainless steel German french-maid
-Nick
Technorati Tags
politics comedy humor review satire culture Media Canadian Media socialism Liberal Media film cinema
movies liberal francophone French Canadian liberal Diverciné Film Festival Quebec Peter Mansbridge CBC tax
aka...
Diverciné: a World View of la Francophonie
(http://www.culturel.org/festival_francophonie/introduction.htm)
"It is a unique opportunity for Canadians to discover the works of filmmakers from various Francophone countries, which are rarely screened in Canada."
Diverciné is a film festival Heritage Canada (you) helped pay for, dedicated to raising awareness of international francophones, and explaining via character-driven explorations of deep-rooted international and cultural crises, exactly why we need french subtitles on every cereal box.
"But Nick!" you're no doubt asking. "I'm an ordinary Canadian! How does awareness of films I'll never see from various poor-as-dirt french speaking nations affect my life in the slightest, when what I really need is a new iPod battery, brake cables for my Saturn, and citrus from foreign lands to ease this damnable scurvy?"
I would say there are no easy answers, and I'm sorry for the scurvy. Then I would tell you that a sad, iron-clad reality of the art world is that if you gotta subsidize it, nobody wanted it to begin with. Unfortunately, the perception among many is that without state-sponsored art, high culture as we know it would promptly vanish into the airwaves, devoured by the insatiable cultural maws of Simon Cowell and Ben Mulroney, and the more equine cultural maw of Julia Roberts.
Besides, without state-sponsored art, we're all liable to forget what Canadian culture is or who we are. We may very well wake up one morning thinking ourselves somewhere in Kabul, and wondering where's that wretched one-eyed servant-boy cripple with the cured goat meat already? Then we'd select a good sturdy stick and prepare to give that urchin a sound thrashing, until the wise-yet-stern visage of Peter Mansbridge materialized on our televisions, and suddenly everything was clear again.
It's important to know who we are. It's even more important that we're told! And what we apparently are is Canadians with an insatiable interest in french-speaking pockets of the globe heavily peopled with theater majors.
Sleep well.
What I would've preferred to have for my money:
-Criterion Collection dvd's
-Stainless steel German kitchen appliances
-Stainless steel German french-maid
-Nick
Technorati Tags
politics comedy humor review satire culture Media Canadian Media socialism Liberal Media film cinema
movies liberal francophone French Canadian liberal Diverciné Film Festival Quebec Peter Mansbridge CBC tax
posted by Nick | 6:26 PM
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