Programme
10.35 – Screening
Gagarine
Cert. 12A | by Fannt Liatard & Jeremy Trouilh 2021, 98 mins, feature, in French with English subtitles
The mesmerising debut of directors Liatard & Trouilh is not your usual angry social film about estates but a more poetic view on them. Yuri lives in Cité Gagarine, a vast housing project in Ivry-sur-Seine on the outskirts of Paris. It was opened in the 1960s by the famous Russian cosmonaut, after whom both the building and its young resident are named. Now in a state of disrepair, the building is to be torn down, but this once-thriving hotbed of leftist political activism still hosts a community of residents unhappy at having to leave. None more so than Yuri, who not only figures out a way to stay beyond the council-mandated evacuation order, but to create his own orbital spacecraft within it.
12.23 – Lunch break
13.10 – Banlieue multiculturelle française – an interactive workshop
Join Michaël Vidon (French Teacher and Bilingual Poet Educator) for an interactive journey to “la banlieue”. Inspired by its culture, Michaël will unpick some of Gagarine’s themes of community and exclusion, realism and fantasy, as well as social class and aspiration. He will bring to the fore hip hop songs, BD and La Haine to showcase the multi-faceted representations of the French working-class suburbs.
Students will be invited to reflect, discuss and write about the film and their own experiences of multicultural society. The workshop will borrow from the A Level film and literature study techniques while being rooted in history and popular culture.
This activity is ideal for KS5. The aims are for students to experience French with a purposeful, creative and culturally situated multicultural outlook.
Michaël Vidon is a French Teacher and bilingual spoken word educator. He runs the Multilingual Poetry Slam every year as part of the SKKF and works with schools and arts organisations to explore the overlaps between creativity and language learning while celebrating students’ diverse and unique voices.
14.45 – End of the day
Contact
- Agathe Morisse, School Activities Manager
schools@institut-francais.org.uk / 020 3924 3511
