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(09/24/07 12:24am)
PARIS – Marcel Marceau, the master of mime who transformed silence into poetry with lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions that spoke to generations of young and old, has died. He was 84.\nWearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau breathed new life into an art that dates back to ancient Greece. He played out the human comedy through his alter-ego Bip without ever uttering \na word.\nOffstage, he was famously chatty. “Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop,” he once said.\nA French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp during World War II, unlike his father, who died in Auschwitz. Marceau worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children and later used the memories of his own life to feed his art.\nHe gave life to a wide spectrum of characters, from a peevish waiter to a lion tamer to an old woman knitting, and to the best-known Bip.\nHis biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. In turn, Marceau inspired countless young performers – Michael Jackson borrowed his famous “moonwalk” from a Marceau sketch, “Walking Against \nthe Wind.”\nMarceau’s former assistant Emmanuel Vacca said on French radio that the performer died Saturday in Paris, but gave no details.\nIn one of Marceau’s most poignant and philosophical acts, “Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death,” Marceau wordlessly showed the passing of an entire life in just minutes.\nHe took his art to stages across the world, performing in Asia, Europe and the United States, his “second country,” where he first performed in 1955 and returned every two years afterward. He performed for Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and \nBill Clinton.\nTireless, Marceau took his art to Cuba for the first time in September 2005.\n“France loses one of its most eminent ambassadors,” President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement. Prime Minister Francois Fillon praised Marceau as “the master” with the rare gift of “being able to communicate with each and everyone beyond the barriers \nof language.”\nThe onstage persona Bip was born in 1947, a sad-faced double whose eyes lit up with childlike wonder as he discovered the world. Bip was a direct descendant of the 19th-century harlequin, but his clownish gestures, Marceau said, were inspired in part by Chaplin and Buster Keaton.\nMarceau likened his character to a modern-day Don Quixote, “alone in a fragile world filled with injustice and beauty.”\nSingle-handedly, Marceau revived the art of mime, which dates to antiquity and continued until the 19th century through the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, or improvised theater.\n“I have a feeling that I did for mime what (Andres) Segovia did for the guitar, what (Pablo) Casals did for the cello,” he once told The Associated Press in an interview. Marceau started his own company, then in 1978 the International School of Mime-Drama.\nMarceau also made film appearances. The most famous was in Mel Brooks’ 1976 film “Silent Movie” – he had the only speaking line, “Non!”\nAs he aged, Marceau kept performing, never losing the agility that made him famous.\n“If you stop at all when you are 70 or 80, you cannot go on,” he told the AP in 2003. “You have to keep working.”
(09/28/06 2:57am)
PARIS -- Researchers using three-dimensional technology to study the "Mona Lisa" say the woman depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's 16th-century masterpiece was either pregnant or had recently given birth when she sat for the painting.\nThat was one of many discoveries found by French and Canadian researchers during one of the most extensive physical examinations ever carried out on the artwork.\n"Thanks to laser scanning, we were able to uncover the very fine gauze veil Mona Lisa was wearing on her dress. This was something typical for either soon-to-be or new mothers at the time," Michel Menu, research director of the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, said Wednesday on LCI television.\nMenu said a number of art historians had suggested that she was pregnant or had just given birth.\nResearchers have established that the picture was of Lisa Gherardini, wife of obscure Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, and that da Vinci started painting it in 1503.\nThe name "Mona Lisa" is the equivalent of "Madame Lisa." La Joconde, as the painting is referred to in many countries, is the French version of her married name.\nThe scan revealed depth resolution so detailed it was possible to see differences in the height around the paint surface cracks and in the thickness of the varnish.\n"We now have very precise information about the thickness of the layers," Bruno Mottin, of the French restoration center, told reporters in Ottawa, Canada. "We know how the painting is painted, with very thin layers of painting. That's one of the things we couldn't see by the naked eye and that Canadian technology brought us."\nJohn Taylor of Canada's National Research Council said there were no signs of any brush stroke. "That includes the very fine details of the embroidery on the dress, the hair," he said. "This is the je ne sais quoi of Leonardo. The genius. We don't know how he applied it."\nThe scan even revealed da Vinci's first conception of Mona Lisa.\n"The 3-D imaging was able to detect the incised drawing to provide us with da Vinci's general conception for the composition," said Christian Lahanier, head of the documentation department of the French research center.\nThe artist brought the painting to France in 1517. It has been in the Louvre Museum since 1804.\nThe data collected in 16 hours of scanning, starting in 2004, took a year to analyze. It shows warping in the poplar panel da Vinci used as his canvas, but the Mona Lisa smile is not threatened.\n"We didn't see any sign of paint lifting," Taylor said. "So for a 500-year-old painting, it's very good news. And if they continue to keep it the way they have, in an environment-controlled chamber, it could remain like that for a very long time." Menu said all the secrets behind the enigmatic painting have yet to be revealed, including da Vinci's techniques.\n"We particularly want to understand how he painted his shadows, the famous 'fumato' effect," Menu said.
(08/25/05 5:19am)
PARIS - Sounding convinced that Lance Armstrong is guilty of doping, the director of the Tour de France said "we were all fooled" and the seven-time champion owes an explanation for "proven scientific facts" from a newspaper report alleging he cheated to win cycling's most prestigious event.\nJean-Marie Leblanc's comments appeared in the French sports daily L'Equipe Wednesday, a day after the newspaper reported that six urine samples provided by Armstrong during the '99 Tour tested positive for the red blood cell-booster EPO.\n"For the first time -- and these are no longer rumors, or insinuations, these are proven scientific facts -- someone has shown me that in 1999, Armstrong had a banned substance called EPO in his body," Leblanc said.\n"The ball is now in his court. Why, how, by whom? He owes explanations to us and to everyone who follows the tour. Today, what L'Equipe revealed shows me that I was fooled. We were all fooled."\nIn a statement on his Web site on Tuesday, Armstrong denied ever taking performance- enhancing drugs and dismissed the article as "tabloid journalism." A representative for Armstrong said Wednesday the cyclist was at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., and would not have further comment on Leblanc's statements.\nIt was the first time since doping whispers began to swirl around Armstrong that Leblanc spoke critically of him. Leblanc has expressed admiration for Armstrong -- while acknowledging that the Texan's methodical training regimen took some of the European-style romance out of the Tour.\nWhile Leblanc seemed convinced of Armstrong's guilt, fellow cyclists came to his defense.\n"Armstrong always told me that he never used doping products," five-time winner Eddy Merckx told Le Monde newspaper. "Choosing between a journalist and Lance's word, I trust Armstrong."\nL'Equipe is owned by the Amaury Group whose subsidiary, Amaury Sport Organization, organizes the Tour de France and other sporting events. The paper has often raised questions about whether Armstrong has ever used performance enhancing drugs. On Tuesday, the banner headline of its four-page report was "The Armstrong Lie."\nEPO, formally known as erythropoietin, was on the list of banned substances at the time Armstrong won the first of his seven Tours, but there was no effective test then to detect it.\nThe allegations took six years to surface because EPO tests on the 1999 samples were carried out only last year -- when scientists at the national doping test lab outside Paris opened them up again for research to perfect EPO screening, with the blessing of the World Anti-Doping Agency.\nAnother five-time Tour champion, Miguel Indurain, said he couldn't understand why scientists would use samples from the 1999 Tour for their tests.\n"I feel the news is in bad taste and out of place, given that it happened six years ago after his first Tour victory, and after he won six more," Indurain wrote in the Spanish sports daily Marca. "With the little I have to go on, it is difficult to take a position, but I think at this stage there's no sense in stirring all this up."\nJan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour champion, said he did not have all the details and did not want to be too quick to judge.\n"But clearly I would be very disappointed if the story were true," he wrote on his Web site.\nArne Ljungqvist, chairman of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission, said the urine samples from 1999 still could produce legitimate EPO test results.\n"I believe they may well, if they have been properly stored -- without access to outside people so they cannot be tampered with. Also in a refrigerator or deep frozen," Ljungqvist said Wednesday in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "If not in such a situation -- there's no guarantee they have not been subjected to undue temperatures."\nL'Equipe's investigation was based on the second set of two samples used in doping tests. The first set were used up in 1999 for analysis at the time. Without that first set of samples, any disciplinary action against Armstrong would be impossible, French Sports Minister Jean-Francois Lamour said.\nLamour said he had doubts about L'Equipe's report because he had not seen the originals of some of the documents that appeared in the paper.\n"I do not confirm it," he told RTL radio. But he added: "If what L'Equipe says is true, I can tell you that it's a serious blow for cycling."\nThe International Cycling Union did not begin using a urine test for EPO until 2001. For years, it had been impossible to detect the drug, which builds endurance by boosting the production of oxygen-rich red blood cells.\nJacques de Ceaurriz, the head of France's anti-doping laboratory, which developed the EPO urine test, told Europe-1 radio that at least 15 urine samples from the 1999 Tour had tested positive for EPO. The year before, there were more than 40 positive samples, he said -- reflecting how widespread the drug was when riders thought they could not be caught.\nThe lab said it could not confirm that the positive results cited in L'Equipe were Armstrong's. It noted that the samples were anonymous, bearing only a six-digit number to identify the rider, and could not be matched with any one cyclist.\nHowever, L'Equipe said it was able to confirm the samples were Armstrong's by matching the cyclist's medical certificates with the results of positive doping tests bearing the same sample numbers.\nArmstrong has insisted throughout his career that he has never taken drugs to enhance his performance. In his autobiography, "It's Not About the Bike," he said he was administered EPO during his chemotherapy treatment to battle cancer.\n"It was the only thing that kept me alive," he wrote.
(08/24/05 4:55am)
PARIS -- A French newspaper says Lance Armstrong used the performance-enhancing drug EPO to help win his first Tour de France in 1999, a report the seven-time Tour winner vehemently denied.\nL'Equipe devoted four pages to its allegations, with a Tuesday front-page headline "The Armstrong Lie." The paper said that signs of EPO use showed up in Armstrong's urine six times during the '99 race.\n"Unfortunately, the witch hunt continues and tomorrow's article is nothing short of tabloid journalism," Armstrong wrote on his Web site. "I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs."\nHowever, the Tour de France's director said Tuesday that L'Equipe's report seemed "very complete, very professional, very meticulous" and that it "appears credible."\n"We are very shocked, very troubled by the revelations we read this morning," Jean-Marie Leblanc told RTL radio. However, he cautioned that Armstrong, his doctors and his aides should be heard out before people make any final judgment.\nLeblanc also said any disciplinary action appeared unlikely, based on the L'Equipe account. The paper's investigation was based solely on B samples -- the second of two samples used in doping tests. The A samples were used up in 1999 for analysis at the time.\nThe governing body of world cycling did not begin using a urine test for EPO until 2001. For years, it had been impossible to detect the drug, called erythropoietin, which builds endurance by boosting the production of oxygen-rich red blood cells.\nEPO tests on the 1999 B urine samples were not carried out until last year, when scientists performed research on them to fine-tune EPO testing methods, the paper said.\nThe national anti-doping laboratory in Chatenay-Malabry, which developed the EPO test and analyzed the urine samples in question, said it could not confirm that the positive EPO results were Armstrong's.\nIt noted that the samples were anonymous, bearing only a six-digit number to identify the rider, and could not be matched with the name of any one cyclist.\nHowever, L'Equipe said it was able to make the match. It printed photos of what it said were official doping documents. On one side of the page, it showed what it said were the results of EPO tests from anonymous riders used for lab research. On the other, it showed Armstrong's medical certificates, signed by doctors and riders after doping tests -- and bearing the same identifying number printed on the results.\nThe lab statement said it had promised to turn over its results to the World Anti-Doping Agency "on condition that they could not be used in any disciplinary proceeding."\n"It will be very interesting to see what UCI does and what the U.S. Cycling Federation does and what Lance Armstrong has to say," WADA chairman Dick Pound said. "If the evidence is seen as credible then yes, he has an obligation to come forward and specifically give his comments, especially after his previous comments that he has never used drugs.\n"If anything were found, we couldn't do anything because we didn't even exist in 1999. But it's important that the truth must always be made clear," Pound added.\nL'Equipe, whose parent company is closely linked to the Tour, has frequently raised questions about how Armstrong could have made his spectacular comeback from testicular cancer without using performance enhancers. L'Equipe is owned by the Amaury Group whose subsidiary, Amaury Sport Organization, organizes the Tour de France and other sporting events.\nA former L'Equipe journalist, Pierre Ballester, was co-author of a book published last year that contained doping allegations against Armstrong. He wrote the book with Sunday Times sportswriter David Walsh.\nIn the book, "L.A. Confidential, the Secrets of Lance Armstrong," one of the cyclist's former assistants claimed that Armstrong once asked her to dispose of used syringes and give him makeup to conceal needle marks on his arms.\nArmstrong has taken libel action against The Sunday Times after the British newspaper reprinted allegations in a review of the book in June 2004. The case will go to trial in London's High Court in November.\nArmstrong retired from cycling after his record seventh straight Tour victory last month.\nFrench Sports Minister Jean-Francois Lamour said he was deeply saddened by the allegations, though he noted that they were unconfirmed and never could be because of the lost A samples.\n"It's a shock to learn this about a great champion," the former Olympic champion fencer said. "This is certainly an element that could tarnish his image"
(05/12/05 2:15am)
CANNES, France -- Cannes is where "Fahrenheit 9/11" caught fire, winning the film festival's top prize last year and putting the heat on the White House. This time, organizers want to avoid that kind of political firestorm.\nAs a new edition of the French Riviera festival opens Wednesday, its director has a reminder for the jury: Movies are usually judged for their art, not their politics.\n"Michael Moore's talent is not in doubt," festival director Gilles Jacob said. "But in this case, it was a question of a satirical tract that was awarded a prize more for political than cinematographic reasons, no matter what the jury said."\nThe film's acclaim by the nine-member jury, led last year by director Quentin Tarantino, was an "out of the ordinary event that probably won't be repeated," Jacob said.\nThis year's jury president, Sarajevo-born director Emir Kusturica, insisted the decision would be based on aesthetics above all else. But when asked if he meant that as a criticism of "Fahrenheit," he said no.\n"I think `Fahrenheit' was very aesthetic," he said.\nOf the 21 films in this year's main competition, none of them look likely to match the political punch of "Fahrenheit."\nAn Iraqi film will compete for the first time, but "Kilometre Zero" is set not in present-day Iraq but in 1988, during the country's war with Iran. Other selections include films from China, Belgium and Mexico.\nThe festival opens Wednesday evening with the French thriller "Lemming," centered on two couples, a dinner party and a rodent stuck in the pipes of the kitchen sink.\n"I have a taste for the strange," director Dominik Moll told Le Figaro newspaper.\nMoll made the hit thriller "With a Friend Like Harry," where the title character turned out to be a deranged creep instead of a pal. His new film stars Laurent Lucas, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Andre Dussollier and Charlotte Rampling, whose career has been jump-started by young French directors.\nCannes' 12-day lineup includes many Cannes regulars, including Woody Allen, David Cronenberg, Wim Wenders, Lars von Trier, Atom Egoyan and Gus Van Sant.\nCronenberg's "A History of Violence" stars Viggo Mortensen as a diner owner who has a deadly encounter with burglars; Egoyan's "Where the Truth Lies," with Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, is about a comedy duo whose careers end in scandal; and "Sin City," an action film, features Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Alba.\nCannes, which tries for a mix of small international films and big Hollywood blockbusters, will get its biggest boost of celebrity power from "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." The movie plays out of competition here days before its May 19 theatrical debut.\nAllen's film is also not competing for prizes. The New York director, who won a career achievement award at Cannes in 2002, departed from his habitual Manhattan haunts to shoot "Match Point" in London. The cast includes Scarlett Johannson, Emily Mortimer and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.\nThe jury will present its awards at a closing cermony on May 21.\nKusturica, the jury president, is one of the most respected figures in European film and a two-time winner of Cannes' top honor. Known for his whimsical, folkloric style, he won the Palme d'Or for 1985's "When Father Was Away on Business" and 1995's "Underground."\nOther jury members include Salma Hayek, Toni Morrison, Javier Bardem and John Woo.
(06/14/04 1:25am)
PARIS -- From Sweden to Slovakia, Europeans in 19 countries chose from candidates for the EU parliament Sunday, wrapping up the bloc's first election since its historic expansion eastward in May.\nSix other countries, including Britain, had already cast ballots in the four-day election, seen as a report card for governments at home.\nIssues in the campaign ranged from Europe's role in Iraq to the European Union's difficult attempts to negotiate a constitution. Some parties see the charter as a threat to national sovereignty.\nAnother important question was the bid by predominantly Muslim Turkey to join the 25-member group.\nSome 14,670 candidates vied for 732 five-year seats. The election was a first for the 10 new EU countries, which include former communist countries like Poland and Hungary.\nBut even in many new member nations, politicians struggled to overcome voter apathy about the parliament, whose role is often misunderstood.\nAs polls opened across the EU, many voters focused on national issues, not European concerns.\nIn France, for example, many were expected to cast a censure vote against the conservative government, which has led unpopular reforms of pensions and other pillars of France's treasured social protections. The opposition Socialists were likely to profit.\nGermany's conservative opposition styled the election as an opportunity to punish Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government for the country's stagnant economy and high unemployment.\nIn Hungary, political analyst Istvan Perger noted that hardly any campaign slogans even mentioned Europe, concentrating instead on disparaging opponents.\n"This campaign was not about Europe," Perger said. "It was about every party trying to consolidate its position on the domestic political landscape."\nThere were some quirky candidates, including a Slovenian soccer star, an Estonian supermodel and a Czech porn star who campaigned in provocative outfits.\nSome politicians focused on a single issue in campaigning. Hans Kronberger, a candidate for Austria's Freedom Party, has been featured on campaign posters saying: "Turkey in the EU? Not with me!" In Vienna, which has a sizable Turkish population, Adolf Hitler-style mustaches were drawn on several of the posters.\nIn Poland, spending cuts to meet EU requirements have reduced enthusiasm for membership, with unemployment at around 20 percent.\nThe disillusionment fueled popularity for Self-Defense leader Andrzej Lepper, who lambasted current political leaders as thieves who sold out the country's interests with their drive to join the EU.\nBalloting has already wrapped up in the Netherlands, Britain, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Malta and Latvia.\nSunday is Italy's second day of voting, and ballots were also to be cast in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.\nThough the European Parliament cannot introduce legislation, its powers have strengthened dramatically since its first elections in 1979. Then, it provided a balance against the EU's powerful unelected commission.\nNow, it has EU budget approval and influence over legislation on trade, environment and consumer affairs. Legislators shuttle back and forth between sessions in Strasbourg, France, and Brussels, Belgium.
(08/11/03 1:06am)
PARIS -- Melting Alpine glaciers unleashed a cascade of rocks, London choked in a record 100-degree temperatures and with wildfires raging in seven countries, the Pope urged people to pray for rain.\nEurope sizzled this weekend, and there was no immediate relief in sight for much of the continent. The heat also broke a record in Germany, and a French toddler died of exposure in a sweltering parked car.\nWith the mercury hovering around 100 degrees for days, more than 40 deaths have been blamed on the heat.\nIn the French Alps, a police officer warned hikers about rock avalanches along a popular route on Mont Blanc. Glacial ice is melting, loosening rocks from the mountainside. On Saturday, helicopters swooped into the area to evacuate 44 climbers in danger, police said.\nIn more arid regions, wildfires have blackened forests in Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Croatia and the Netherlands.\nThree separate fires were blazing Sunday in Portugal, with the worst in the southern region of Algarve. Pinus Verde, an association of forest-product producers, analyzed satellite images from NASA to calculate forestland destroyed in two weeks of blazes: 741,316 acres, according to daily Publico.\nIn northeastern Italy, firefighters worked for a third-straight day to put out a fire in the countryside near Udine.\nPope John Paul II was spending time in a papal palace in Castel Gandolfo, a lakeside town generally cooler than Rome.\nThe pope told visiting tourists and pilgrims Sunday that he was worried about the deadly drought-fed wildfires.\n"I invite all to join in my prayers for the victims of this calamity, and I exhort all to raise to the Lord fervent entreaties so that He may grant the relief of rain to the thirsty Earth," John Paul said.\nA 3-year-old girl died Saturday in a car parked outside her parents' home in Wimille in northern France, authorities said.\nThe parents apparently lost track of who was watching her -- each thought the little girl was with the other, police said.\nIn Germany, authorities are predicting a new record number of drownings this year. Cash-strapped municipalities have closed free swimming pools, forcing more Germans to head to rivers and lakes to escape the heat, where there is less supervision.\nKlaus Wilkens, president of the German Lifesaving Society, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that his organization was predicting 700 deaths by drowning by the end of the summer, compared with 598 last year.\nThis weekend alone, at least three people drowned in Germany's rivers and lakes, including a 10-year-old girl.\n"The closing of the pools must be stopped," Wilkens said.\nThe German weather service reported Sunday it had registered a new countrywide temperature record in the Bavarian city of Roth, which hit nearly 105 degrees on Saturday. The previous record of 104 was also in Bavaria, set in 1983.\nBritons also gasped through a record-breaking day, watching thermometers climb above the 100 for the first time in Britain since temperatures have been recorded.\nThe record-breaker -- 100.22 degrees -- was measured at Heathrow Airport, near a parched and baking London, the national weather service said.\nNo quick relief was expected: Germany is expected to swelter until midweek; France is counting on at least another week of abnormally high temperatures; and weather experts in Italy expect the country to be steamy until September.
(05/29/03 1:08am)
CANNES, France -- A film loosely based on the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School by American director Gus Van Sant captured the top prize this year at the Cannes Film Festival.\nFeaturing real high school students, not actors, "Elephant" was well-received at Cannes, though the win on Sunday was something of a surprise.\nVan Sant looked somewhat astonished as he accepted the Palme d'Or, saying "Vive la France!"\nThe movie starts out showing an ordinary school day, with students gossiping in the cafeteria, playing football or working in the photography lab. The end is stunning and graphic: two students go on a shooting spree in the hallways.\nVan Sant doesn't offer any reasons for why school violence happens; he just presents it, and leaves it to viewers to think about.\nVan Sant is best known for "Good Will Hunting," whose Oscar-winning script was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. But for Van Sant, "Elephant" harks back to the small, lower-budget movies he once made, like "My Own Private Idaho." He shot "Elephant" in just 20 days.\nWhile newspapers have given lots of attention to school violence, "Drama is an area that we're not supposed to really be talking about such things, because it is such a large problem," Van Sant said.\nThe title, "Elephant," refers to the old expression about a problem that's as easy to ignore as an elephant in the living room.\n"It's easier to leave it sleeping and not aggravate it," he said.\nThe director was the first American to take the Palme d'Or since Quentin Tarantino won for "Pulp Fiction" in 1994. Van Sant also won the prize for best director.\n"Uzak," (Distant), a slow-moving Turkish film about a jobless man from the countryside who irritates his sophisticated city cousin by moving into his apartment, won the Grand Prize, or second place.
(05/22/03 1:55am)
CANNES, France -- You'd never know German cinema is enjoying a renaissance by attending the Cannes Film Festival.\nFor the 10th year in a row, German movies have been shut out of the main competition.\nBut almost everywhere except the French Riviera, they're getting seen -- and getting awards.\n"Nowhere in Africa" won the Academy Award as best foreign-language picture in March. And "Good Bye, Lenin!" is among Germany's all-time top-grossing movies and is headed for theaters from Japan to Britain.\nGermany's success at other festivals has some in the industry wondering: Who really needs Cannes, anyway?\n"All those German movies are running in Venice, or somewhere else," said Cathy Rohnke of German entertainment group Telepool. "People are saying, 'OK, if they won't take my movie, someone else will.'"\nOther moviemakers might simply have given up. Wim Wenders said some of his fellow Germans are discouraged by the perennial Cannes snub.\n"Some, maybe because of fear of being rejected, decide to go to Berlin" for the festival there, the director said.\nWenders was the last German director with a German-language film competing for the top Cannes prize: 1993's "Faraway, So Close!" about an angel who falls to earth. It was the sequel to his "Wings of Desire." In 1997, his English-language "The End of Violence" competed as a joint German-French-U.S. entry.\nWenders was in Cannes this year to show a blues documentary, "The Soul of a Man," which was not in competition.\nCannes organizers watched 908 feature-length movies this year and whittled the choice down to 20 for the main competition, including five French movies, three from the United States and two from Japan.\nGermany submitted more than 10 movies, said Mariette Rissenbeck of the German film export union. She's at a loss for the exact reasons to explain the rejections, though she suggests that current German films may not fit the Cannes organizers' sensibilities.\nGermany's movie industry has been changing in the past few years. Once, German movies were often dark and psychological. Rainer Werner Fassbinder epitomized that aesthetic, making challenging movies about tortured characters.\nToday, "more and more, directors have the audience in mind," said Thorsten Ritter, head of marketing for Bavaria Film International.
(04/08/03 4:28am)
PARIS -- Writer Andre Breton, founder of the surrealist movement, spent a lifetime filling his apartment with trinkets and treasures -- from butterflies on stickpins to tribal masks to paintings by Magritte and Miro.\nBreton's wife, Elisa, lovingly preserved the small apartment in the lively Pigalle neighborhood of Paris, clutter intact, for decades after he died in 1966.\nNow that she, too, has died, the 4,100-piece collection is to be auctioned. The sale has started an impassioned debate about culture, money and French history.\nCritics say Breton's eclectic treasures were meant to be seen as an ensemble -- a surrealist manifesto -- and shouldn't be parceled off. On Monday, as bidding opened, dozens of protesters banded together outside the Drouot auction house to block the doors.\nOne protester handed out flyers and admonished visitors: "Don't buy anything!"\n"They're destroying his work," said the man, a writer who goes by the name Laurent Laurent. "The objects he chose have meaning because they're placed together. They're tearing it apart."\nBreton himself never gave any indication of what he wanted done with the collection, now worth about $30 million. His family tried for years to have it preserved -- but the French government never bought into the idea.\nCritics, who circulated a petition and wrote to President Jacques Chirac, say the state is letting cultural treasures slip away from France. Some say the apartment at 42 rue Fontaine, where Breton spent his time writing, entertaining and smoking his pipe, should have been opened to visitors.\nOthers argue Breton -- who hated museums -- would have bristled at the idea of a public shrine but might have enjoyed the idea that his bric-a-brac would find new owners.\n"It's interesting, the idea that all these objects will have a new life," said Henri-Claude Randier, one of the sale's art experts.\nOutside France, many people are most familiar with surrealism's visual artists: Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau. In France, every teenager studies Breton's literature, and many take his message of nonconformity to heart.\nThe Georges Pompidou Center already owns a part of Breton's collection -- a wall of tribal masks and modern paintings. The Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris has set aside about $1 to $2 million to try to keep more works in the capital.