The devastation of the pandemic has shed a harsh light on the inequities that tear us apart and is confronting us with the choice between a global politics of humanity or a politics of tribes. This lecture examines the fundamental global inequality manifested by the north/south divide and presents the Bantu concept of ubuntu, as illustrated by Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and the Wolof notion of nite, often evoked by Léopold Sédar Senghor, as foundations for a politics of an open society as described by Henri Bergson.

Souleymane Bachir Diagne is a professor of Philosophy and Francophone Studies at Columbia University and the Director of the Institute of African Studies. His Mields of research and teaching include history of philosophy, history of Logic and mathematics, Islamic philosophy, African Literature and Philosophy. His most recent publications in English are: Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition, New York, Columbia University Press, 2018; Bergson postcolonial, New York, Fordham University Press, 2019; In Search of Africa(s). Universalism and Decolonial Thought (co-author: Jean-Loup Amselle), Cambridge, UK and Medford, MA, Polity Press, 2020

The Series is sponsored by the Cultural Services of the French 
 Embassy in the U.S. and the OfJice of the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Duke University.

The Frist Art Museum will kick off its 20th anniversary with Picasso. Figures, an exhibition from the incomparable collection of the Musée national Picasso-Paris. The exhibition offers an in-depth look at Pablo Picasso’s career-long fascination with the human figure as a means of expressing a range of subjects and emotions. Featuring approximately 75 paintings, works on paper, and sculptures, Picasso. 
Highlights of the exhibition include masterpieces from Picasso’s various styles and periods, as well as more intimate works that provide fresh insights into his innovative practice. “Viewers will see how, as Picasso continuously deconstructed and then remade the body, he was also recasting the history of figuration as a combination of his own psychological view of humanity and observations about the disruptive nature of life in the 20th century,” says Frist Art Museum chief curator Mark Scala.

Picasso. Figures is organized in collaboration with the Musée national Picasso-Paris. It was conceived and organized by Emilia Philippot, curator, and François Dareau, associate curator, Musée national Picasso-Paris.

At a time when our community needs cinematic stories more than ever, the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is back.

AJFF returns February 17-28, reimagined as a hybrid experience featuring 12 days of virtual and drive-in screenings.

The 2021 film lineup is as compelling and diverse as ever, with 38 features and 16 short films from around the world, including numerous World, North American and U.S. premieres.

"In this clever, digital-age love story, a long-distance relationship takes a growing toll on a French-Israeli couple who struggle to stay connected. New Parisian parents Julie and Yuval try to sustain a routine via Skype chats between Paris and Tel Aviv, where Yuval is renewing his visa. At first, the video and phone calls keep them close. But as the days drag on, the novelty wears thin and jealousies are laid bare, with jobless photographer Yuval surrounded by intrusive family and friends, and Julie juggling career and childcare.
Leveraging a minimalist format, writer-director Keren Ben Rafael’s timely story of distance and isolation offers stylistic surprises while spotlighting sensitive performances by co-stars Judith Chemla and Arieh Worthalter." Program AJFF

The 8th edition of the Young French Cinema program has been launched which aims to bring French films with no US distribution to art house cinemas, film societies, the Alliance Française network, and American universities! Presented by UniFrance and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, the program once again throws the spotlight on rising young French filmmakers whose works offer a blend of visually innovative approaches and cultural influences. New this year: films available on virtual cinema, limited grants and recorded Q&A. A complete presentation of the 2021 YFC program is available here.

FUSED: French U.S. Exchange in Dance fosters dialogue, strengthens professional relationships, and sparks creative artistry through cultural exchanges by introducing choreographers and performers whose works has never or rarely been seen in the partner country.

Since 2017, the program has expanded beyond artists based in France and the United States to include projects by artists from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East performing in the United States, as long as their work is co-produced by French cultural institutions. In this age of global mobility, the goal is to support artists with varied backgrounds and influences, in order to promote a multiplicity of voices and foster a rich intercultural dialogue.

Étant donnés Contemporary Art aims to strengthen ties between France and the U.S. in the field of contemporary art by fostering active collaboration and encouraging long-lasting partnerships between French visual artists, curators, and collectives and American curators and cultural institutions. The fund supports the discovery of emerging talents, while also sustaining interest in established artists. Furthermore, it has been instrumental in creating a network of curators from France and the U.S. Since its inception, Étant donnés has developed an international reputation by allocating over $3 million to fund more than 300 projects and 19 curators.

Application deadline: February 28, 2021

Les Services Culturels de l’Ambassade de France lancent What’s Next?, une série d’interviews de personnalités du secteur des industries culturelles et créatives basées aux Etats-Unis.  

Selon les mots de Gaëtan Bruel, Conseilleur Culturel : “What’s Next ? n’est pas une newsletter, mais une fenêtre ouverte sur le meilleur de l’Amérique de la culture et des idées, celle qui réfléchit sur notre situation présente et imagine un futur qui donne encore quelques raisons d’espérer et de rêver”.

N'hésitez pas à vous inscrire pour recevoir les prochains numéros !

Water Graves considers representations of lives lost to water in contemporary poetry, fiction, theory, mixed-media art, video production, and underwater sculptures. From sunken slave ships to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Valérie Loichot investigates the lack of official funeral rites in the Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico, waters that constitute both early and contemporary sites of loss for the enslaved, the migrant, the refugee, and the destitute. Unritual, or the privation of ritual, Loichot argues, is a state more absolute than desecration. Desecration implies a previous sacred observance--a temple, a grave, a ceremony. Unritual, by contrast, denies the sacred from the beginning.

Valérie Loichot is Professor of French and English at Emory University and author of The Tropics Bite Back: Culinary Coups in Caribbean Literature and Orphan Narratives: The Postplantation Literature of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse (Virginia).

"This pioneering study provides eco-humanist insights into a broad spectrum of contemporary French fiction. Professor Krell contributes richly to discussions around the green agenda that are more and more urgent because of the intensity of manmade changes in our planet’s climate."
Daniel Finch-Race, Research Fellow in Environmental Humanities at Università Ca' Foscari

Jonathan F. Krell is a Professor of French at the Department of Romance Languages of the University of Georgia, Athens (U.S).

"Les itinéraires poétiques d'un intellectuel africain à travers le monde

Ce texte célèbre le voyage et son charme essentiel : la rencontre de l'inattendu. Felwine Sarr y évoque les lieux qu'il découvre lors de ses pérégrinations, mais aussi les paysages intérieurs que ceux-ci dessinent en lui. Car si le voyage est une déambulation sensible sur les chemins du monde, il est parfois immobile et se fait au point nul de l'errance." (Edition Philippe Rey)

Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese scholar, musician and writer born in Sine Saloum, Niodior Arrondissement. He studied Economics and taught at the Gaston Berger University until his recent move to Duke University in North Carolina (U.S).

The Thomas Jefferson Fund provides a unique framework to enable promising and innovative projects to reach their full potential and enrich French-American research collaborations.