Even art-loving dogs had to wrap up during the recent cold snap in Paris. Photo: Eric Tenin of Paris Daily Photo.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012 11:13
Paris Update Fashion Flash
FRENCH MICHAEL MOORE TAKES ON NATIONAL FOOD INDUSTRY
The motto of Le République de la Malbouffe: "Opacity, Obesity, Precarity."
Xavier Denamur, the owner of five small restaurants in Paris, is a man on a crusade. It began with the 2009 decrease in value-added tax from 21.6 percent to 5.5 percent on restaurant meals, which he says favored big chain restaurants without helping the small independents as promised. Going beyond that issue, he blames French government policies and a lack of transparency in the food industry for the increasing industrialization of food preparation and delivery, the degradation of food quality in France, and increasing obesity and public health costs. One of his campaigns calls for legislation that would create a label informing restaurant customers whether the food is prepared from fresh ingredients on-site or is factory-made or frozen.
Denamur has formed an association called La République de la Malbouffe (The Republic of Bad Food) and has just released a documentary film of the same name, directed by Jacques Goldstein. Unfortunately, the film lacks focus and does not get his laudable message across clearly. Shown only in a handful of Paris cinemas, it is also available on DVD (with issue no. 17 of Rue89 magazine, for €5). Denamur continues to hold debates and chase politicians, hoping to get them to listen to his call for transparency. “My goal is to get citizens interested in politics again,” he says, by encouraging them to vote and write to their representatives. Heidi Ellison
Tuesday, 14 February 2012 23:00
Paris Update Art Notes
ANDREAS SLOMINSKI
Recent works by Andreas Slominski at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris (through February 29). Video by Nikolaï Saoulski. Click here for larger screen.
Paris Update This Week's Events
For full details about an event, click on its name to visit the official Web site (in English when available).
This tiny exhibition in the upper reaches of the superb Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (1 Place du Trocadéro, 75116 Paris) is an absolute must, if only for what is says about the redemptive power of work. The centerpiece is a gorgeously detailed 1/75 scale model of one of the first of France’s great Gothic cathedrals, built (the model) by 57 prison inmates at Cergy Pontoise and on the Ile de Ré. Around it are samples of the impedimenta thrown up by this sort of project – progress books, the molds used to form the bricks, the books providing historical background and context, an atmospheric video interview and more. For an added bonus while you’re there, lose yourself in the labyrinth of structures containing full-scale facsimiles of some of France’s surviving Romanesque and Gothic church wall paintings, and goggle at the glorious bird’s eye view of Paris, the Eiffel Tower and its surroundings. R. Hesse
