Word: french
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Scalding sun; fields of snow. Maurice Jarre created memorable anthems for these two extremes in his first films for David Lean: the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia and the 1965 Doctor Zhivago. The French composer, who died Sunday in Los Angeles at 84, after a losing bout with cancer, wrote the scores for more than 150 features, but he'll always be associated with Lean, as much as Bernard Herrmann is with Alfred Hitchcock or John Williams with Steven Spielberg. The director devises the images; the composer gives them emotional heft. Both the pictures and their accompanying sounds lodge indelibly...
...Born in Lyon in 1924, Jarre was no child prodigy; he was in his late teens before he decided to study music. In Paris after the war he hooked up with two exceptional impresarios of French theater: Jean-Louis Barrault and Jean Vilar. For Vilar he wrote incidental music for modern readings of classical plays. In 1951, Georges Franju, a director of spare, uncompromising documentaries, hired Jarre to score his film essay on wounded veterans, the 1951 Hôtel des Invalides. In the next dozen years they would collaborate on two more shorts and five sepulchral features, including Head...
...rupture came after French legal investigators indicted nine members of Rwanda's government - and implicated President Paul Kagame - for alleged complicity in the political assassinations that proceeded the Hutu genocide of Rwandan Tutsis. The indictments also charge those officials with acts aimed at amplifying the slaughter of their fellow Tutsis. Rwanda rejects those charges as seeking to cover what they describe as France's involvement in aiding, arming, and assisting the Hutu genocide effort, insisting Paris wants to cleanse its own guilt by casting Tutsi rebels who halted the massacre as the culprits behind it. Critics...
...Sarkozy also plans to visit Brazzaville, capital of the neighboring Republic of Congo, and Niger, in search of business opportunities for French companies. French commentators have noted how such business-as-usual tightness with African cronies, whose track record on democracy and human rights often leaves much to be desired, contrasts with Sarkozy's earlier pledges to break with Paris' traditional Françafrique policy of turning a blind eye to authoritarianism and corruption to maintain healthy relations with stable African allies. (See pictures of the Pope's recent visit to Africa...
...reaction of Le Pen's fellow MEPs was one of indignation and rage. Backed by a huge majority of legislators, the push to deny the French politician his moment as president now looks a virtual certainty. "Mr Le Pen's negationist remarks, reiterated once again in the European Parliament, disqualify him from chairing the inaugural session of our institution for even a second," said Joseph Daul, the French leader of the Christian Democrats in the parliament. "In this symbol of the reconciliation of European people, it would be an extremely bad signal for our citizens and the world," agreed Martin...