After one last early morning stroll to finish shooting one last roll of film at Passage Choiseul, it’s time to bid adieu to the City of Light… Mom and I share a cab to the airport: she’s going home to Vancouver (with ten pounds of chocolate in her bags); Toronto for me… On to to the next adventure but we’ll always have Paris…
Archives for the month of: June, 2013
Merci beaucoup, Archer, for Au Bon Coin and Tissus Reine.
Merci beaucoup, Walter, for the Arcades Project.
Merci beaucoup, chère Maman, for a box of sweet treats from our favorite boulangerie to share at the end of the day.
C’est la vie and I’m so grateful for it.
I remember asking him, “Since you’ve stopped making art, how do you spend your time?” And he said, “Oh, I’m a breather, I’m a respirator, isn’t that enough?” He asked, “Why do people have to work? Why do people think they have to work?” He talked about how important it was to really breathe, to live life at a different tempo and a different scale from the way most of us live.
-Calvin Tompkins on Marcel Duchamp from Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews
Many Paris cultural institutions are closed on Mondays. But not the Cinema Museum at the Cinèmatheque Française! Created by archivist and cinephile Henri Langois, the museum features all kinds of early cinematic and pre-cinematic devices of wonder plus clips and ephemera from films both celebrated (the head of Mrs. Bates from Psycho) and obscure (a fabulous poster from the 1915 Paris silent crime serial Les Vampires featuring the seductive Musidora as Irma Vep!). I also learn the answer to a question that’s been puzzling me for a while now: why do European 8mm cameras run at a standard speed of 16 frames per second rather than the 18 fps customary in the US? Because 16 fps equaled two full cranks of the cinematograph, the device used by the Lumière Brothers in France to shoot and project some of the earliest motion pictures in the mid-1890s!
Not quite as old as the cinematograph, the original Shakespeare and Company dates back to 1919. The beloved bookshop, started by Sylvia Beach and continued in its current location by George Whitman and his daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman, has always been a gathering place for the glittering literati as well as up and coming young writers (you know…everybody who was in Midnight In Paris…). Tonight’s featured readers leave me cold but the little room upstairs delights with its old piano, manual typewriters, yellowing photographs, comfy couches and walls of books (The Case of Salvador Dali by Fleur Cowles?!?!?) just begging to be browsed….
For those of you who find Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen a bit overwhelming (it is, after all, the biggest flea market in the world!), Marché aux Puces de la Porte de Vanves is an easy breezy alternative. Spread out along tree-lined sidewalks over a couple of streets in the 14th arrondissement, the market has a relaxed vibe with dozens of vendors selling all my favorite vintage things: film cameras, 1950s appointment books, floral print cotton fabric, silver ladles, buttons and bijoux, rubber stamps, tiny dolls, postcards, sunglasses… oh la la, the list goes on and on. Plus there’s a lady with a little cart who cruises around singing “Café!” This is how every Sunday morning should begin.
In the afternoon, Mom and I embark on a cinematic journey of Montmartre as part of the international Ambassadors of Coincidence project, brainchild of cosmic wabi sabi mamas Dagie and Gesine. Using our own address and three maps as starting points plus our trusty Bolex 8mm to capture the magic, a series of chance encounters and signs in the landscape lead us from the house where Erik Satie lived to a vineyard to Vincent van Gogh’s apartment to the Café des Deux Moulins made famous by the movie Amélie to two actual windmills to a tiny restaurant serving “galettes et ciders bretons.” The roll is shot, the journey is at an end: mission accomplished!
Before New York had The High Line, Paris created La Promenade Plantée aka La Coulée Verte, an elevated parkway that follows the old Vincennes railway line that was in active use between 1859 and 1969 and subsequently abandoned. Despite the blustery weather, the Promenade is filled activity: senior citizens strolling along the wooden walkway, tourists enjoying the slightly skewed views of the city, and puppies, homeless people and overly amorous young lovers fumbling around in the dense greenery. Something for everyone!
Later I hop on a Vélib’ (with over 20,000 bikes at 1800 stations throughout the city, this is the biggest bike-share program in the world) for a twilight ride around the city, ending up on a path beside the Seine heading toward the Tour Eiffel. There’s art, music, cafes, hangout and recreational areas made from recycled materials, more magnificent views of the city and tons of people enjoying public space on a summer night. Why do urban engagements that appear effortless here seem like impossible dreams back in LA?
Julie, Glen and Max have gone to Germany. Mom has gone to Galeries Lafayette. I’m going to the movies!
There are many famous cinemas in Paris and I book-end the day with movies at two of them: an early afternoon matinee of Michel Gondry’s latest L’Ecume des jours at Studio 28 in Montmartre (known for the riot that broke out there after the 1930 premiere of Luis Buñuel’s controversial L’Age d’Or) and a late evening screening of the 1951 Julien Duvivier classique Sous Le Ciel de Paris at Cinéma Le Desperado in the Latin Quarter (home to the Paris art-house cinema scene since the late 1940s when Éric Rohmer started up a Cine-club and Gazette du cinéma in the company of François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette.). The two make a rather nice swing-shift double bill: both are in French without subtitles, both feature an idealized version of Paris, both start out kind of bright and romantic and get increasingly dark, and in both the girl dies at the end! The cinemas themselves are also strangely similar: red decor, no ads and no trailers before the film, box office opens 1 minute prior to showtime, audiences comprised of a handful of elderly cinefiles who sit in absolute silence for the duration of the program and immediately file out afterwards, also in silence.
But out in the streets, there’s noise noise noise! June 21, the summer solstice, is also the date for all-night music par-tay Fete de la Musique, aka Weiner On The Shoe because somehow it’s inevitable that an errant saucisson will get stuck to the sole of a chaussure at some time during this event, causing you or someone you love to very nearly wipe out on a cobblestone street. But really it’s about the music: every genre, every style from Aimee Semple-style religious musicals in front of cathedrals to gaggles of young female year abroad types singing a cappella madrigals on street corners, to white dj boys with dreads playing reggae in front of wine bars, to Laotian hardcore rockers, to those kind of million-member mega groups (including an entire horn section) whose songs last 45 minutes each and consist of the phrase “Music makes me want to make music!” over and over again (in English with French accent) to Django Reinhardt wannabes to Doobie Brothers cover bands made up of old bald guys with funny hats. Don’t forget about the requisite “Who invited him?” dancer dude doing the skankin’ pickle in front of each and every act. There are also a lot of turntables, a lot of boas, a lot of booze, a lot of breaking glass, a lot of waving like you just don’t care, and a lot of men peeing/talking in the street holding their you-know-what in one hand and their cellphone in the other. It’s actually almost impossible to convey the experience in words but imagine a kind of Day of the Locust meets MTV’s Spring Break meets Sweatin’ To The Oldies meets The Warriors and you will have a pretty good idea of the Fête de la Musique vibe.
It just wouldn’t be a visit to Paris without an opulent display of taxidermy. Last year it was Deyrolle, this year it is Le Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature. Where else can you find a unicorn in a snowstorm?
