At eighty springs, Harrison Ford courageously agrees to bring out of the closet the mythical leather jacket/Fedora hat outfit of his fetish alter ego, whose whip he cracks again in this fifth installment. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny shows us the adventurous archaeologist on the threshold of a well-deserved, but somewhat bitter and lonely retirement, in the New York of the year 1969. But only a few hours after his last day as University teacher Dr. Jones is contacted by his goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), whom he has not seen in years. The young woman, an antiquities dealer, begs her godfather to help her find a relic buried somewhere in the Aegean Sea: the Archimedes Sundial.
An object shrouded in mystery and which would have the ability to detect temporal faults in the sky. Hurry: A team of Nazis led by ex-officer Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) is also on the hunt for the dial, with dark designs in store. This last lap of our darling adventurer commits a few missteps, including an uneven rhythm and the flagrant imperfection of certain special effects. But we do not sulk his pleasure, the mythical theme of John Williams always makes us shiver with happiness, the show is there and the theme of the end of the hero finely orchestrated, until a particularly moving finale. Have a good trip, Indy!
Indoors.
Here is a HRRS: A Show That Makes Happy. Rare enough, therefore, not to miss it. Carolyn Carlson’s ballet “Signs” premiered 25 years ago. Born from the fruitful encounter of the dancer and choreographer with the painter Olivier Debré, it deploys, on stage, the latter’s huge canvases, like so many invitations to dance, to reverie, to depth, but also to joy. Because everything begins, here, with the smile, “the first communication, the first projection of the child, of the man; the departure of any alphabet, of any writing”, according to the words of the painter, who makes it the original sign of these seven paintings which, a little over an hour, will follow one another. It is a poetry, a fantasy, a shimmer and a grace that give wings to the heart and the soul of the spectator gradually embraced by the emotions that this marriage of the body, the color provides. and music (René Aubry’s score is sometimes spellbinding). The star duo Germain Louvet and Hannah O’Neill wear it, beautiful and supple like young gods to whom this ballet offers a freedom that goes as far as playfulness. Beauty, lightness, happiness to be alive and to defy gravity. Joy is communicated, we applaud.
Signs, ballet by Carolyn Carlson. Sets and costumes: Olivier Debré. Music: Rene Aubry. Until July 16, 2023. Opéra Bastille. https://www.operadeparis.fr/saison-22-23/ballet/signes
What do these beautiful black and white portraits of Henry Roy in the 1990s have in common? They show what Lilian Thuram, in a landmark book, called his “dark stars”, in other words, they highlight personalities who, when he was very young, enabled Henry Roy, a native of Haiti, to dream of a future for the better within a French society where his “similar”, as he puts it, did not appear anywhere, in the 1960s and 1970s of his youth: the musician Manu Dibango , skater Surya Bonaly, singer Princess Erika, rapper MC Solaar, filmmaker Euzhan Palcy, designer Xuly Bet, or Katoucha, who was Saint Laurent’s muse.
A whole era – which awakens so many memories in those who knew it -, all those who “excelled” in their field were brought together in a book entitled Regards noirs, which Roy had a terrible time getting published: the theme of black identities n Didn’t have the infatuation it’s known since! Moreover, Maryse Condé – who makes the poster and whose portrait welcomes you to the basement of the cultural space and shop in the 18th arrondissement, devoted to the cultures of the continent and the diasporas – was not the most favorable to this common thread, but the magician as she calls the photographer took her in his lens and it was over: she signed the introduction to the book, a collector’s item for sale on site. Did you know, for those who remember “At the Theater Tonight”, that its famous costume designer, Donald Cardwell, was black? This is one of the most beautiful photos of this iconic exhibition, by the man who has just published Ibiza Memories (at the Presses du réel), an intimate album in the sumptuous colors of the island that has remained mythical…
“Glances noirs”, Little Africa, 6 bis, rue des Gardes, 75018 Paris. Until August 5.
During the siege of Abadan (Iran), in 1980, Omid, a 14-year-old teenager, will do everything possible to allow the inhabitants he meets on his way out of the city. How to resist in times of war, without taking up arms? How do you save those you love? How to leave the beloved city which is gradually turning into a mousetrap without having the feeling of abandoning it to enemy hands? These are all questions that cross the young man when he discovers an abandoned boat in the port of Abadan, a “lenj” (traditional Iranian ship) which he baptizes The Mermaid and which he will make his ark.
Director Sepideh Farsi remembers with emotion Abadan, this capital of the Iranian oil industry, a cosmopolitan city visited as a child with her father, and the extraordinary resistance of its inhabitants, in 1980, when war broke out with the ‘Iraq. “This seat has fascinated me for a long time. The civilians held out for eight months, resisting the enemy with almost empty hands. I wanted to pay homage to them. The Iran-Iraq conflict is both one of the deadliest of the second half of the 20th century, but also the least documented. Between initiatory story and poetic tale, this new nugget of animation from Les Films d’ici studios (Waltz with Bachir, Josep), presented this year at the Annecy festival, tells above all about the power of magic and memory in wartime and the continuity of the resistance.
Indoors.
The gallery recently opened by Christophe Person is located rue des Blancs-Manteaux in Paris, but once through its door, the departure is immediate for Saint-Louis in Senegal. “Any visitor to Saint-Louis needs a calabash with curdled milk, for Mame Coumba Bang, the goddess of the river,” warns Burkinabe photographer Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo, a guest in residence in this city where he has become familiar with the famous Guet N’dar district, that of sinners, facing the river where the legendary Mame Coumba Bang is not only a genius of water, continues the artist who went in search of her, “it is the spirit of Saint -Louis”.
In a quasi-painting, close to a Moroccan fantasia, he captured the daily scene of women waiting to return from fishing, hoping that the goddess had not kept their husbands or brothers. He took the dancer Germaine Acogny to the river, to capture her ritual gesture, he played all the blues possible to state the mixed nuances of attraction and fear which are worth to the population to deposit pieces of meat in order to feed the great and mysterious Mame. A thousand leagues from folklore and ethnology, the gaze of Ouedraogo, who has worked and reworked the pigments of the digital palette, captures and respects the daily sacredness of a city with incredible talent. This exhibition also marks the Parisian reunion of the duo that the artist forms with his gallery owner, Christophe Person, since they founded the biennial of contemporary sculpture in the city of the photographer, Ouagadougou, where the next edition of BISO will take place in October.
Christophe Person Gallery: 39, rue des Blancs-Manteaux 75004 Paris