Programme
10.35 – Screening
Gagarine
cert. recommended 12A | by Fanny Liatard & Jeremy Trouilh, 2021, 98′, 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 (Poet, French Teacher and Performer) for an interactive journey to “la banlieue parisienne”. Inspired by the culture of la banlieue, Michaël will unpick some of Gagarine’s themes of community and exclusion, displacement and hope, realism and fantasy, as well as social class and inequality. He will bring to the fore songs, literature and other films (like 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 focus on film and literature study techniques while being rooted in history and popular culture.
This activity is ideal for KS5 students but also suitable for students of KS3 and 4 to broaden their experience of French language study. The aims are for students to experience French with a purposeful, creative and culturally situated multicultural outlook.
Michaël Vidon is a French Teacher and 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
