Word: mitterrand
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...nothing modest about the idea, and when the 350 cultural superstars finally left Paris last week after a glittering two-day conference on Creation and Development, it was clear that there had been nothing modest about their deliberations. Lodged in luxury hotels at the expense of François Mitterrand's Socialist government, the high-powered conventioneers gathered in the Sorbonne's venerable amphitheater to ponder their curious subject: cultural solutions to the world's economic crisis...
...Diderot and Voltaire, luminaries ranging from Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Márquez to Novelists Norman Mailer and William Styron and Actress Sophia Loren debated such topics as state control of the arts and the unemployment crisis. In between they supped at the Foreign Ministry and lunched with Mitterrand. So dazzling was the cast that even the stars sometimes seemed overwhelmed. Said Film Director Francis Ford Coppola: "The people here are incredible. It's like a college-a very good college." The meeting, Italian Theater Director Giorgio Strehler concluded grandly in his summation, had provoked awareness "of the need...
...while rhetoric flowed freely, the conference fell notably short on productive debate. In his closing address Mitterrand called for a New Renaissance, claiming that "the originality of the French idea lies there, at the intersection of technology and creativity." From such high-minded but vague declarations the colloquium often descended into special pleading and ideological posturing. Novelist Mary McCarthy called on the French government to permit Poland's Radio Solidarity to broadcast in France. Feminist Kate Millett deplored the "severe lack of representation of women" at the meeting (85 out of 350). U.S. cultural "imperialism," particularly in the form...
Such spectaculars have become a hallmark of France's lavish new investment in the arts, and the personal signature of Mitterrand's flamboyant and popular Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, 43.* Dapper in his close-cut suits, possessed of boyish good looks and dark curls that seem to stir women, Lang has ambitious plans for the arts in Socialist France. "Our goal," he says, "is to transform all of France into a cultural work site." The transformation of the budget has been dramatic. In 1981, under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the Ministry of Culture...
...reopen the Barbie dossier in February 1982. This was necessary because his 1947 and 1954 convictions had lapsed as a result of France's 20-year statute of limitations on war crimes. Last November, Riss officially indicted the one time Gestapo captain for "crimes against humanity," giving the Mitterrand government legal ground for going after Barbie...