• English

Film festivals have a reputation as glamorous events during which one may overhear egregious name-dropping, brazen attempts at social climbing, and the loathsome clacking of that actress whose heels and career are just a bit higher than yours– how does she do it?  Festivals like Cannes are reputed for the releasing of decent films with big-name directors out into society, but they are equally reputed, nay– revered– for their unabashed luxury and star credibility, and the films are often obscured by the cleavage, the Bee-hives, and any variation of protuberance.  This is one reason why it is so lovely to get to experience a fledgling (just having celebrated, in festival-form, its 5 year birthday) festival like ÉCU.  Still too familial and intimate an effort to not be run out of its creators’ apartment, ÉCU is a festival yet too young to have washed over its idiosyncrasies in cubic zirconium– the visit I made to the office the week before the festival, for example, was hectic.  The apartment was disheveled, interns were scurrying like just-slaughtered chickens, and a cacophony of Australian/French/Serbian/ Swedish/German/English/American/Estonian/ Portuguese/Flemish accents pulsated in-and-out of my doubtlessly professional talks with the festivals’ overseers, and one was lucky not to get clobbered by roles of gargantuan posters.  It was pretty fantastic.

Just like their website, ECU is a near bi-lingual experience with an Anglophone leaning.  It takes place in Paris, and seems a proud member of this very cinematic city (I hesitate to do Paris an injustice in glorifying it with terms like “cinematic,” but if we reflect on the number of films made in/making reference to/making love to Paris, it seems “cinematic city” is a respectably modest title), but makes no attempts to veil its Anglophonic roots.  Over half of the staff, both from what I gathered in my office-cameos and in attending the festival were native English speakers, and those who weren’t were enviably multilingual.  The introductory speeches to each event were mostly held in English, with key points translated in French, which merely reinforced my penchant for linguistic laziness as a globalization-spoiled native English speaker.

ÉCU was held in the Latin Quarter at the Cinéma Grand Action and theater le Triomphe.  As a Belleville resident, it is rare that I cross Paris’ southern, socioeconomic equator (as an honorary member of Parisian society, I am likely trying to grasp onto an identity and thus grasp for extremes)– the right bank is fun, funky and mixed, and the left bank is a gorgeous, miniaturize-able bourgeois wasteland.  At least, this was my very uninformed assumption.  I was indeed very glad to have these preconceived notions debunked and to have a reason to further explore the left bank; in between events, I found myself ogling at the gastronomical offerings (ranging from the ubiquitous Turkish kebab to Moroccan restaurants to a candy shop whose presentation was so picturesque that, since I had nothing edible in my hand, made me simply want to start eating my hand), fawning over surprise patches of park– I found the playground quite an opportune place to perfect my French, as its fellow climbers and swingers, for reasons that will go unmentioned, had a very similar speaking level to my own.  Also, I visited the Panthéon just up the hill (if you are of the name-dropping breed, Voltaire’s corpse is always an exemplary person/object(?) to say you kicked it with between screenings).

To be continued…