Author: Admin

Talk & Readings

More than just a crime fiction, the noir explores how amoral protagonists deal with a corrupt world where everyone has fallen. The genre that thrived in the war-torn 40s and the tumultuous 70s, has made a comeback in the past years. Respectively the authors of bestsellers Sirens and The Lost and the Damned, Joseph Knox and Olivier Norek have played a major part in this revival. In a discussion chaired by Ayo Otanade, they tell us what makes the noir genre so riveting and what its resurgence tells about our era. The discussions will be interspersed with readings by actor David Mildon.

Hybrid event
Onsite: Ayo Onatade, Joseph Knox, David Mildon
Online: Olivier Norek

photos:
Olivier Norek © Bruno Chabert
Joseph Knox © Jay Brooks

Related / Latest Publications:

	Chambre 413, Joseph Knox translated by Fabienne Gondrand (published by Le Masque)
	The Lost and the Damned, Olivier Norek (translated by Nick Caistor, published by MacLehose Press)

Workshop

On the occasion of the publication of the YA edition of her novel Eve Out of Her Ruins, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman and published by Les Fugitives, the acclaimed Mauritian author Ananda Devi will be leading a creative writing and translation workshop exploring place and identity across languages, with sixth form students at Farnborough College, designed and delivered in collaboration with Shadow Heroes.

Related / Latest Publication:

Eve out of her ruins, Ananda Devi, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, YA edition published by Les Fugitives

Concert

A concert by Agathe Max & Anne Lovett with visuals by Li Chevalier

Agathe Max, viola
Anne Lovett, piano
Li Chevalier, visuals Obscure clarté

Drawing inspiration from a mixed repertoire including pieces by Erik Satie, Lili Boulanger, Fritz Kreisler, Henry Purcell, and their own compositions, violinist Agathe Max and pianist Anne Lovett meld both classical and contemporary music with electronics and the multi-media installation Obscure clarté by visual artist Li Chevalier.

PROGRAMME

Erik Satie, Gnossienne No. 1, Avant-dernières pensées
Lili Boulanger, Reflets
Fritz Kreisler, Praeludium and Allegro
Henry Purcell, tbc
Anne Lovett, Margate, What We Are
Agathe Max, White Mill Under Sun Ra's Control

This concert is presented as part of Beyond Words and les Salons en Musique, a chamber music concerts series supported by Aline Foriel-Destezet

From left to right: Agathe Max © Luke Mawdsley, Anne Lovett © Marina Geraghty & Li Chevalier © Zhang Jing Feng

Screening

Les Sauvages

FRA | 2019 | 2x52 mins | dir. Rebecca Zlotowski, with Roschdy Zem, Marina Foïs, Amira Casar, Souheila Yacoub | in French with EN Subs

Discover the two first episodes of the groundbreaking French series Les Sauvages! Co-created by French author Sabri Louatah and directed by Rebecca Zlotowski (Planetarium, An Easy Girl), the series is based on Louatah’s Savages novels and brings to the screen a great ensemble of actors including Roschdy Zem, Marina Foïs and Amira Casar. In present-day France, the first presidential candidate of Algerian descent is on the brink of power. But on the night of the election, he is shot, creating turmoil and throwing the entire nation into disarray. Savages deals with six days in the life of a country tearing itself apart.

Tue 18 May 9.15 pm | Ciné Lumière III
Wed 19 May 7.30pm | Ciné Lumière III

Screening

Daraya: une bibliothèque sous les bombes

FRA | 2018 | 64 mins | doc | dir.s Delphine Minoui & Bruno Joucla | in English, French and Arabic with EN subs

At the heart of the Syrian civil war, a group of activists created an underground library in the besieged outskirts of Damascus. After years of blockade, they were forced to leave their city. But they managed to save their videos illustrating a unique experiment of cultural resistance under the bombs. Built between the past and the present, this film follows the story of three friends who met during the 2011 revolution and never gave up on their cultural resistance and peaceful struggle. Despite ceaseless bombing, they not only saved books from the rubble, but created a secret library, which quickly became a safe haven for peace, freedom and democracy: a special experience that they filmed and documented meticulously.

Screening

USA | 2020 | dir. Chloé Zhao, with Frances McDormand and David Strathairn | in English cert 15A

Winning the Oscar for best picture and best directing, Chloé Zhao’s engrossing and humane film Nomadland also won its lead Frances McDormand the award for best actress at this years Academy Awards.

Fern (Frances McDormand) is a woman in her sixties who has lost everything – her money to the recession and her beloved husband to an early death. Kitting out a van as a home and following temporary work from place to place, she embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a modern-day nomad. This elegiac drama depicting the subcultures in the US’ western wildlands is an adaptation of the non-fiction book by Jessica Bruder, Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century.

© Pascal Ito © Flammarion

Talk & Readings

While the question of Franco-Algerian memory remains as fraught as ever, literary ties between both sides of the Mediterranean offer a welcome escape to these memorial tensions. The playwright and author Alice Zeniter, born in France to an Algerian father, and the Paris-dwelling young Algerian novelist Kaouther Adimi join Dr. Natalya Vince to discuss how these trans-Mediterranean literary ties continue to inform the Franco-Algerian relationship.

Hybrid event
Onsite: Natalya Vince, Olivia Ross
Online: Alice Zeniter

This discussion is organised in partnership with English PEN, the human rights organisation championing the freedom to write and the freedom to read since 1921, as part of part of their Common Currency centenary programme, which brings together writers, readers and activists for events, residencies, campaigns and conversations across the UK and Ireland.

For more information on Common Currency, please visit: www.englishpen.org/common-currency

Related / Latest Publications:

	The Art of Losing, Alice Zeniter (translated by Frank Wynne, published by Picador)
	Our fighting sisters, Natalya Vince (published by Manchester University Press)

Talk & Readings

From Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms to Malraux’s La Condition Humaine, authors have always tried to grapple with war’s place in literature. After a decade of war in Syria, Dima Wannous, the author of The Frightened Ones, and Albert Londres-prized journalist Delphine Minoui, author of The Book Collectors of Daraya, explore, in conversation with Ian Black, former Guardian's Middle East editor, how literature has coped with the Syrian war and the devastation it has left in its wake. The conversation will be interspersed with readings by Olivia Ross.

Hybrid event
Onsite: Dima Wannous, Ian Black, Olivia Ross
Online: Delphine Minoui

photo: Dima Wannous © Richard Sammour

Related / Latest Publications:

	The Book Collectors of Daraya, Delphine Minoui (translated by Lara Vergnaud, published by Picador)
	The Frightened Ones, Dima Wannous (translated into English by Elisabeth Jaquette, published by Penguin)
	Ceux qui ont peur, Gallimard (translated into French by François Zabbal, published by Gallimard)
	Enemies and neighbors, Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017, Ian Black (published by Grove atlantic)

Screening

USA | 2020 | dir. Chloé Zhao, with Frances McDormand and David Strathairn | in English cert 15A

Winning the Oscar for best picture and best directing, Chloé Zhao’s engrossing and humane film Nomadland also won its lead Frances McDormand the award for best actress at this years Academy Awards.

Fern (Frances McDormand) is a woman in her sixties who has lost everything – her money to the recession and her beloved husband to an early death. Kitting out a van as a home and following temporary work from place to place, she embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a modern-day nomad. This elegiac drama depicting the subcultures in the US’ western wildlands is an adaptation of the non-fiction book by Jessica Bruder, Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century.

Screening

USA | 2020 | dir. Chloé Zhao, with Frances McDormand and David Strathairn | in English cert 15A

Winning the Oscar for best picture and best directing, Chloé Zhao’s engrossing and humane film Nomadland also won its lead Frances McDormand the award for best actress at this years Academy Awards.

Fern (Frances McDormand) is a woman in her sixties who has lost everything – her money to the recession and her beloved husband to an early death. Kitting out a van as a home and following temporary work from place to place, she embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a modern-day nomad. This elegiac drama depicting the subcultures in the US’ western wildlands is an adaptation of the non-fiction book by Jessica Bruder, Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century.