Pier Marton

a present tense

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Cyril Effala: Le Brassens du Cameroun

Posted by on May 12, 2013 in Afri, Death, Highlights, Human Rights, Humor, Ideas, Idées, Music, Politics, Racism | 2 comments

The talented Cyril Effala dies in Yaoundé at the age of 35 from typhoid fever. More songs (Le laboureur, Nuits Perdues, Ashuka Ngongoli, Saint Pierre) are available on this MySpace page. May someone produce a compilation CD! Thanks to my friend Jay Lou, I have one cassette somewhere… Monsieur l’Abbé (some mistakes in the transcription –...

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Michel Gondry + Boris Vian = Ze Big Union

Posted by on Apr 24, 2013 in Books, Film, France, Humor, Idées, Music, Poet, Spectacle | 0 comments

With the release in France of a second film version of L’Écume des Jours – Mood Indigo – by Gondry (cf. below for the 1968 version) the marriage of two French zany authors is a done deal! Boris Vian (writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer!) is famous for his songs, his plays and his novels. He was...

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Lautréamont / Isidore Ducasse

Posted by on Mar 4, 2013 in France, Highlights, Hispanic, Humor, Idées, Poet, Wars | 0 comments

Besides his translated warning, God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for, unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental...

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Open SESAME!

Posted by on Dec 6, 2012 in Ideas, Idées, Middle-East, Politics, Sci/Nat, Wars, Women | 0 comments

Source: (check out) BBC 4′s Open Sesame – Science in the Desert with David Shukman – Available for the next year. Peace through Science! SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) is a “third-generation” synchrotron light source under construction in Allan (Jordan). It will be the Middle...

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The Other Son – Le Fils de l’Autre

Posted by on Nov 7, 2012 in Antisemitism, Care, France, Human Rights, Ideas, Idées, Jewish, Middle-East, Review | 0 comments

Lorraine Lévy: I wanted to make a film about openings and hope/Je voulais faire un film d’ouverture, un film d’espoir. My review: I too could say “provocative and moving” as other critics have said, but I would rather not. Sometimes life takes a shape that does not conform to the reality we have been taught. In that sense certain...

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