The COVID-19 lockdown forced the team running Paris’ La Clef cinema to close their auditorium to moviegoers. So they hit on an alternative: Projecting movies onto the wall of an adjacent building.
“We said to ourselves: ‘If we can no longer show films to an audience inside a cinema, let’s take away the walls and show films outside,’” organizer Derek Woolfenden told reporters on Friday, shortly before the screening of 1955 Western Man Without a Star, starring Kirk Douglas.
Under the lockdown restrictions, Parisians are confined to their apartments except for brief outings to shop for food and exercise.
Photo: Reuters
However, they can catch the movie by looking out their windows or stepping out onto their balcony.
“We could feel a desire in the neighborhood for some sort of event, because there’s nothing left, the streets are empty, it’s very sad,” Woolfenden said.
The La Clef team took pains to engage the local community in its initiative: The titles to be screened each week are chosen in consultation with the neighbors.
“It’s great,” said Christine Davenier, an illustrator, who was watching the film from her balcony, where she sat propped up on pillows. “It takes us back to before, to screenings when we watched films all together.”
The La Clef officially closed its doors in April 2018, and the owners plan to sell the property.
However, since September last year the building has been occupied by an association of cinephiles and independent movie makers, headed up by Woolfenden, who oppose the sale and say they would stay put to ensure the building continues to serve as a cinema.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS