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      This Theater Brings Nature Right Into the Drama

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      A lush forest makes a spectacular backdrop for the stage of the Théâtre du Peuple, in eastern France.BUSSANG, France — Hundreds of productions have been performed at the Théâtre du Peuple, a 126-year-old playhouse in this village 45 miles from the border with Germany. Yet no matter how good the actors, they are often upstaged by the theater’s unusual backdrop: a steep forest, visible right behind the stage.Framed like a painting by a wooden wall, the view brings nature into the proceedings — and visitors can’t get enough of it. This summer, two hours into “And Their Children After Them,” a new production by Simon Delétang, the otherwise plain set was lifted to reveal the trees beyond. The scene drew oohs and aahs from the audience, followed by spontaneous applause.This indoor-outdoor setup in the Vosges Mountains has sustained the Théâtre du Peuple (or People’s Theater) through many incarnations. Founded in 1895 by the playwright and director Maurice Pottecher, who was inspired by visits to Richard Wagner’s Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Germany, it became known as a pioneering example outside Paris of “popular theater,” drawing audiences from all social backgrounds. Decades before the postwar push by the French government to decentralize a cultural scene concentrated in the capital, Pottecher convinced local workers to attend his plays and perform in them.While amateurs are still cast in one production every year, professional actors have long since taken over most roles, and the Théâtre du Peuple now sits on a curious artistic fence. On the one hand, its founder, nicknamed Le Padre, lingers in the background — literally, since he is buried in the theater’s garden with his wife, the actress Camille de Saint-Maurice. His motto, “Through art, for Humanity,” still adorns the proscenium arch.On the other hand, Pottecher’s own plays — which formed the bulk of the repertoire from 1895 to his death in 1960, and had a strong moralistic streak — have long since fallen out of fashion. “Every director arrives thinking it would be great to perform Pottecher again, but when you read him, it’s not possible: It’s dated,” Delétang said in an interview in Bussang.The exterior of the Théâtre du Peuple, which was founded in 1895.Christophe Raynaud de LageInstead, artistic directors are appointed for four-year terms by the Association of the Théâtre du Peuple, a local governing body, and given free rein. Delétang, who co-directed a small theater in Lyon, Les Ateliers, from 2008 to 2012, had no professional experience in Bussang when he was appointed four years ago. His contract was recently renewed through 2025.The current season, which runs through Saturday, suggests Pottecher’s legacy now lies mainly in the experience of attending the Théâtre du Peuple, rather than in the shows themselves. Before a recent performance of “And Their Children After Them,” locals could be found picnicking in the theater’s garden, a longstanding tradition, with Delétang and the show’s actors tending the bar and making themselves available for a chat.In that sense, Bussang is a forebear to the generation of rural festivals, like the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, that have sprung up around France over the past decade and emphasize approachability.The programming of those events couldn’t be more different, however. While newer events have favored collective decision-making and diversity, the Théâtre du Peuple only just welcomed its first female director, Anne-Laure Liégeois, for a staging of Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” in July. Onstage, Bussang’s productions are also slicker and more aligned with the standards of publicly funded French playhouses — leafy backdrop aside. “And Their Children After Them” and “Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable,” the two productions on offer in August, could have fit right into the lineups of a number of highbrow Parisian theaters.Simon Delétang, center, during a rehearsal for “Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable.” Jean-Louis Fernandez“Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable” started life last year as a response to the pandemic. After the Théâtre du Peuple’s 2020 season was canceled, Delétang directed and performed this 40-minute show, based on an autobiographical essay by the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman, as a compensation of sorts. Billed as an “electro-rock oratorio,” it was first shown here last summer, outdoors, with live music by the band Fergessen.Perhaps it shouldn’t have transferred to the main stage, though, where it lands awkwardly. Dagerman’s meditation on life and depression, written in 1951, comes across as profoundly self-involved in the Théâtre du Peuple’s interpretation. Smartly dressed, his feet planted shoulder width apart throughout, Delétang seems to embody a dandy’s despair rather than any larger malaise.It doesn’t help that Dagerman returns time and again in his essay to the naïve notion of complete freedom from society’s shackles as the ultimate “liberation.” Last year, that could conceivably have been understood as channeling the desire for a release from lockdowns. Public debate in France has moved on; this summer, it has been focused on whether or not vaccine passport mandates infringe on personal freedom, and in that context, Delétang’s ode to self-determination took on an entirely new meaning — an unfortunate coincidence, since the season was programmed months ago.“And Their Children After Them” adheres more closely to Pottecher’s humanist ideal. The play is based on a Goncourt Prize-winning novel by Nicolas Mathieu, who grew up in the Vosges region. Like the book, Delétang’s production follows a group of friends in the 1990s, in a rural part of eastern France increasingly left behind by deindustrialization.From left, Agathe Barat, Lise Lomi and Elsie Mencaraglia in “And Their Children After Them.”Jean-Louis FernandezAlthough it opens with Nirvana’s 1992 hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and ends with France’s landmark victory at the 1998 soccer World Cup, the stage version of “And Their Children After Them” often leaves the historical context aside to focus on the horniness of teenagers. Anthony, the main character, is desperate to attend parties and sleep with girls, who in turn grapple with their own sexuality.Delétang designed the production for the graduating class of a renowned Lyon drama school, the ENSATT, and provided everyone with a chance to shine. Very few scenes are acted out in a conventional sense. Instead, the 13 actors take turns narrating the story and loosely playing the main characters. To indicate a kiss, for instance, two actors describe it to the audience without touching each other, merely closing their eyes to signal pleasure.It proves a smart directing choice to avoid extensive nudity and any problematic gender dynamics, and the young cast takes to Mathieu’s text with a solid sense of rhythm. The downside is a lack of movement over three hours, as Delétang’s static posture in “Our Need for Consolation Is Insatiable” is replicated here by every performer.Counterintuitively, given how often the teenagers from Mathieu’s novel find themselves in the woods, Delétang also opts to open the Théâtre du Peuple’s back wall only at the very end, when the characters are reunited at a city fair. Is it entertaining, at that point, to see a motorbike drive out of the forest into view? Yes. Are there better ways to use the Théâtre du Peuple’s surroundings? Probably. All the more reason to return to Bussang. More

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      Finding a New Theater Audience, Far From France’s Cities

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      In rural gardens, forests and public squares, young stage artists fed up with the country’s rigid scene are striving for diversity and spontaneity.MAURENS, France — The village of Maurens, 300 miles south of Paris, has a population of around 1,000. It has a church; a single bakery; and, since 2013, a summer theater festival, the Théâtre du Roi de Coeur.One recent evening, the scale of the event’s ambition was obvious. On an open-air wooden stage, a cast of 12 put impressive energy into “Fanny, Me and the Others,” a four-hour adaptation of a Marcel Pagnol trilogy. Even when a drizzle started, the members of audience, sitting on chairs and haystacks, opened their umbrellas and stayed put.The Roi de Coeur isn’t alone in bringing large-scale theater to rural backyards. It is one of 17 founding members of France’s Federation of Local Festivals and Theaters, which got underway last month at the Avignon Festival. Its members, dotted around the country in areas with few playhouses, have come together to show that rural theater can compete with bigger city stages, and to push for greater recognition of their contribution to France’s cultural ecosystem.Behind the initiative is a group of millennials, who graduated from top drama schools and found themselves frustrated with the rigid structure of France’s theater world. While the performing arts in the country receive generous public funding, a significant portion goes to state-backed playhouses in large cities. Competition to get independent projects off the ground is fierce; young artists have complained for years about the cost of attending the crowded Avignon Fringe, for instance.Pélagie Papillon, left, and Martin Jaspar in “Fanny, Me and the Others.” Sébastien AngladaChloé de Broca, who started the Roi de Coeur with Félix Beaupérin, said they were warned as students about the profession’s harsh reality. “We knew very quickly that big productions with a large cast were reserved to an elite of sorts,” she said.Unaware of one another at first, the federation’s members carved an alternative path, turning to “spaces not originally meant for theater,” as their official charter puts it. These include gardens, forests, private residences and public squares. The Roi de Coeur’s two stages are installed every year on the property of de Broca’s sister-in-law. Other festivals tour small cities and villages. La Luzège, which is based just east of the Roi de Coeur, stages productions in different venues every night from mid-July to mid-August. Theater doesn’t get much more adaptable than that. Last week, because of the rain, La Luzège moved “Bon Appétit, Messieurs!,” a show inspired by Victor Hugo’s writings, from a garden to a nearby community center with five minutes’ notice.With its focus on underserved rural communities, the federation is finding new audiences. The first wave of cultural decentralization in France, initiated by postwar governments, aimed to break Paris’s stranglehold on artistic life and redirected funding to midsize cities — but often stopped there. “This is a new decentralization. We’re reaching people where they are,” said Romane Ponty-Bésanger, one of La Luzège’s co-directors.Fabrice Henry, left, and Ambroise Daulhac in “Bon Appétit, Messieurs!,” directed by Victor Calcine and Romane Ponty-Bésanger at La Luzège en Corrèze.Victor CalcineSome locals are delighted. Séverine Bonnier, who co-owns a bed-and-breakfast, Ô Vents d’Anges, in Maurens, saw all four of the Roi de Coeur’s productions this year; they were the first performances she’d seen since moving to the area a few years ago, she said. “It’s a matter of time, between work and two children at home,” she added. Some festivals in the federation focus on classic, family-friendly titles, while others stage contemporary plays. One common feature, however, is the absence of a single artistic director: Most operate as collectives. There are four co-directors at La Luzège, and de Broca and Beaupérin make decisions with six others at the Roi de Coeur. Roles are fluid, too. Actors might direct, or help with sets, costumes and other tasks, like tending bar. Nicolas Grosrichard (César in “Fanny, Me and the Others”) wrote a witty short play for children this year, “Anne the Pirate.” They also work fast. While the traditional funding model for independent French theatermakers allows for one creation every other year, most of the federation’s members put together between three and six productions every 12 months. Rehearsal time is limited, and finesse sometimes sacrificed. In the case of “Fanny, Marius and the Others,” conflicts between characters turned into shouting matches, without the nuance more preparation might have afforded.“We’re looking for diversity and spontaneity,” de Broca said. “It’s almost unfinished theater, but it makes it even more alive. The artists are sharing their research with the audience, and people really respond to that.”The Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, founded in the Loire village of Fontaine-Guérin in 2009 and run by an 18-member collective, has become the blueprint for this new generation of local festivals. (The Roi de Coeur was modeled on it, de Broca said.) Matthieu Kassimo, left, and Dorothée Le Troadec in “Anne the Pirate,” directed by Nicolas Grosrichard at the Théâtre du Roi de Coeur.Sébastien MazetIt began when the grandmother of an actor, Lazare Herson-Macarel, allowed the organizers to take over her backyard. After her death in 2012, a crowdfunding campaign raised 70,000 euros, about $82,000, to keep the festival going on her property, and the local authorities opted to buy it and lease it without charge to the collective.The festival’s audience has kept growing, and in 2019, before the pandemic, it attracted around 10,000 visitors. Last month, it achieved a different milestone when the Avignon Festival, the most prestigious event in French theater, featured one of its productions, “The Sky, the Night and the Party,” a six-hour trilogy of Molière plays. The three plays will alternate this month in Fontaine-Guérin.The theater establishment may be waking up to the vitality of rural festivals, but there is still a long way to go, the federation’s members say. Economically, festivals remain fragile, especially during the pandemic, and they often fall outside the criteria for local and regional funding. “Performances in rural settings aren’t recognized as ‘real’ performances, because they don’t take place in identified venues,” Pauline Bolcatto, a member of the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire and one of the federation’s architects, said in a phone interview.This summer, the federation’s members exchanged tips and information, Bolcatto said, and discussed how best to implement France’s new health pass, a government policy that requires businesses and event organizers to check proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test before admitting patrons.The noise generated by daily outdoor performances hasn’t been to everyone’s taste in quiet countryside spots. In 2019, the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire had to fight a lawsuit initiated by a neighbor; rulings so far have been in the troupe’s favor. The Roi du Coeur also faced complaints, and found a compromise: The festival will continue in its current form until the tenth edition, in 2023, and will then move to a yet-to-be-decided location.“The Sky, the Night and the Party — Psyché,” directed by Julien Romelard at Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, part of the Avignon Festival.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Avignon FestivalStill, a chance visit may open unexpected doors. Étienne Fraday, who played the leading role of Césario in “Fanny, Me and the Others,” was working as a boilermaker when he fell in love with the Roi de Coeur in 2016. After being a volunteer for two years, he decided to retrain as an actor, and is currently studying at the prestigious Court Florent in Paris. “This adventure has changed some lives,” de Broca said. More

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      Avignon Festival Forges Ahead, Despite Virus Restrictions

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      The French theater festival’s Fringe offering is giving some respite from the pandemic, even as new rules to stop coronavirus transmission are making it harder to get to the shows.AVIGNON, France — It sounds like a virologist’s nightmare: 1,070 theater productions; 116 venues, most of them within Avignon’s cramped medieval center; and everywhere, festivalgoers sitting shoulder to shoulder in indoor spaces.Yet the Fringe offering at this summer’s Avignon Festival — which runs parallel to the main event, and is known as “le Off” — has forged ahead, even as the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus became the dominant strain in France.Is it problematic to enjoy excellent performances under the circumstances? With the rituals of Avignon, including unmasked performers handing out publicity fliers in the street, came a sense of normalcy. Still, a sneaky sense of guilt permeated conversations with theatergoers — not least when new restrictions were announced, shortly after the Avignon Festival began.Last week, the French government decreed that a “health pass” — a QR code proving full vaccination or a negative coronavirus test result — would be required from July 21 for all venues with over 50 seats. Restaurants, bars and trains will follow from Aug. 1. (The health pass requirement previously applied only to events with more than 1,000 audience members.)Frustration was palpable in Avignon in the days before the rule came into force. While roughly half of Fringe venues are small enough to skirt it, some companies opted to leave early, and bigger shows reported ticket returns and a drop in bookings. Last weekend, as widespread demonstrations against the policy swept France, protesters filled Avignon’s biggest avenue, shouting “Liberté!” (“Freedom!”)Marc Arnaud in “The Metamorphosis of Storks,” his one-man show at the Théâtre du Train Bleu.Alejandro GuerreroWhile the Avignon Festival’s official lineup (“le In,” in local parlance) went from bleak to bleaker in its themes, Fringe fare at least offered some respite from pandemic worries, since comedy has always been a prominent part of this less highbrow portion of the festival.Two original one-man shows, by Mehdi-Emmanuel Djaadi and Marc Arnaud, combine jokes and impressions with explorations of deep-seated inner conflicts. Djaadi’s “Coming Out,” especially, is an exercise in stereotype busting. The coming out in question is religious: The show recounts the 34-year-old comedian’s conversion from Islam to Catholicism.Support for his choice was scarce, as Djaadi tells it at the aptly named Théâtre des Corps Saints (Theater of the Holy Bodies). His family, of Algerian descent, felt he was turning his back on them; a priest explained that he didn’t want any trouble; in artistic circles, many were ill at ease with what they saw as the Catholic Church’s homophobia and conservatism.Yet instead of expressing the resentment he might have felt, Djaadi looks back on his journey, from teenage rebellion and drug dealing to a Catholic wedding, with amused affection. He points to contradictions on both sides, and France’s churchgoers come in for pointed satire, too.In “The Metamorphosis of Storks,” Arnaud focuses on a much shorter stretch of time. He and his wife went through the process of in vitro fertilization, and we meet Arnaud as he is about to donate a sperm sample — a process that brings up far more feelings than he expected.Morgane Peters as Effie in “Iphigenia in Splott,” directed by Blandine Pélissier at Artéphile.Blandine PélissierAs he stalls impatient hospital staff, his monologue covers his sexual education, his attempts at therapy and anxiety about parenthood. It’s a brisk, honest reckoning with the travails of masculinity, which packed the Théâtre du Train Bleu to the rafters (before the health pass requirement was implemented).Not that Avignon audiences were turned off by darker shows. At Artéphile, one of the few Fringe venues to also function as a year-round cultural space, the director Blandine Pélissier offered a stark and convincing production, “Iphigenia in Splott.”The Welsh playwright Gary Owen is relatively unknown in France, but his 2015 reworking of the Iphigenia myth — translated by Pélissier and Kelly Rivière — should prompt curiosity about his work. Here, the sacrificial victim is Effie, from the Cardiff district of Splott, a blaze of raging energy who becomes unexpectedly pregnant. This 90-minute monologue convincingly attributes the lack of support she encounters to social and medical service cuts, and the actress Morgane Peters takes the role from hard-edge anger to pain with poignant ease.Productions with larger casts were a bigger challenge this year, given that a positive coronavirus test among the company was enough to call a show off, and the director and actress Julie Timmerman downsized her show “A Democrat” as a result. Timmerman retooled this excellent production about Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Freud known as “the father of public relations,” for just two actors (Mathieu Desfemmes and herself). The result is adroitly written and witty, a worthy look at the dangers of Bernays’ techniques when they’re used for propaganda purposes.While the Avignon Festival’s official, curated lineup involves far fewer productions than the Fringe, it was hit with a handful of coronavirus-related cancellations. The artistic teams of two choreographers, Dada Masilo and Dimitris Papaioannou, were unable to travel to Avignon, while Eva Doumbia’s “Autophagies” saw its run interrupted when members of the cast and crew had to go into isolation after coming into contact with an infected person.Mathieu Desfemmes and Julie Timmerman in “A Democrat.”Roland BaduelTwo European productions that went ahead make a lasting impression. Emma Dante, of Italy, choreographs as much as she directs, and in “Misericordia,” theater becomes dance and vice versa. In it, three women raise a child, Arturo, who is described as mentally disabled and whose mother was a victim of domestic violence. Together, they form a bickering, complex family. The dancer Simone Zambelli not only captures Arturo’s twitching, disjointed body, he spins his physical vulnerability and moments of joy into poetry, knotting himself into expressive shapes.Avignon also hosted the stage version of “Pieces of a Woman.” Before it became a film starring Vanessa Kirby last year, the playwright Kata Weber and the director Kornel Mundruczo imagined it for the TR Warszawa playhouse in Warsaw, and the Polish cast delivered a gut punch in Avignon at the Lycée Théodore Aubanel.The play starts with the same lengthy labor scene as the film, but it covers less narrative ground after the central couple’s baby is stillborn. Whereas the screen version details the trial of a midwife who attended to the birth, this is only hinted at as a possibility onstage, and Maja, who lost her child, refuses to go through with it. Instead, the characters’ grief plays out over a long family dinner at the home of Maja’s mother.The result requires more patience on viewers’ part, but rewards it with a fully formed portrait of a family adrift. In that sense, the stage version of “Pieces of a Woman” completes Weber and Mundruczo’s puzzle: Let’s hope Avignon won’t be its only international stop.The cast of “Pieces of a Woman,” by the playwright Kata Weber and the director Kornel Mundruczo.Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Festival d’Avignon More

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      'Arab Divas' at the Arab World Institute: Singers Who Took Center Stage

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      A multimedia exhibition in Paris offers a rich flashback to a period between the 1920s and the 1970s when many female performers took center stage.PARIS — The diva sings of love and unmitigated lust. Dressed in a scarlet evening gown with her hair pulled high, she cries out to her beloved, longs for a night of undying passion and yearns for the sun not to rise.The vocalist in the 1969 concert video is Umm Kulthum: the Arab world’s greatest 20th-century performer, possibly the best-known Egyptian woman since Cleopatra and the star of the exhibition “Divas” at the Institut du Monde Arabe, or Arab World Institute, in Paris. The show, which runs through Sept. 26, is a richly illustrated flashback to the period between the 1920s and the 1970s. It portrays unveiled and openly voluptuous women performing on stage and screen without fear of censorship or religious condemnation, and feminists, political activists and pioneering impresarios facing down the patriarchy.Costumes worn by the Lebanese singer Sabah in the 1970s, on display at the Arab World Institute.Alice SidoliBesides costumes and jewelry, passports and posters, album covers and high-heeled shoes, visitors get to watch footage of female performers wiggling their hips in mesmerizing moves and posing on the beach in hot pants. The overall picture contrasts sharply with present-day Western perceptions of the Arab world as a place where women are veiled from top to toe and silenced by all-powerful men.“The exhibition knocks down a fair number of clichés and preconceived ideas about this part of the world. Women actually occupied center stage, embodied modernity and were not at all absent from history,” said Élodie Bouffard, the exhibition’s co-curator. “They sang, acted, made people cry, broke hearts and showed off their bodies just as Western actresses did at the time.”“These images are still very present in the minds of younger generations,” she added. “They don’t just represent the past.”The institute’s president, Jack Lang, who was France’s culture minister in the 1980s and early 1990s, recalled in an interview that when he was a boy visiting Cairo, he sneaked into a theater where Umm Kulthum was performing, and was “stunned, absolutely breathtaken.” He later heard another singer, Fayrouz (the exhibition’s other major diva), while touring in Lebanon as a young actor, he said, then gave her a medal as culture minister in 1988.A poster from the 1968 movie “Bint El-Hares” (“The Guard’s Daughter”), which starred Fayrouz, center. The poster is included in the Paris show.Abboudi Bou JawdeThese women were not just exceptional vocalists, Lang noted: Some participated in their country’s struggle for independence from the colonial powers, Britain and France, and joined in a wave of nationalism that swept across the Arab world. “The emergence of these divas coincided more or less with a time of collective emancipation,” Lang explained. “The music sung by them is an extraordinary expression of freedom.”The exhibition opens in pre-World War II Cairo, the artistic and intellectual hub of the Arab world, where concert halls and cabarets proliferated, many of them established by women, the exhibition co-curator Hanna Boghanim said. Women also had a significant role in the film industry, she added, working as “directors, producers, actresses, costume makers, talent scouts.”Many of these women came from very humble backgrounds, including Umm Kulthum, who is introduced in a velvet-curtained enclosure in the show. Born in a village in the Nile Delta, she first performed disguised as a boy, singing religious songs that bewitched the crowds. Eventually, she came into her own, as a woman and as a voice, and became famous for her improvisational style. Her songs sometimes went on for more than an hour.Her story is told through photographs, album and magazine covers, videos, and bright-colored costumes created for the 2017 biopic “Looking for Umm Kulthum,” directed by the Iranian-born artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat.An installation at the Arab World Institute featuring stills and video from Shirin Neshat’s 2017 biopic “Looking for Umm Kulthum.” Alice SidoliThere are no loans from the Umm Kulthum museum in Cairo, the curators said; they were too complicated and expensive to organize. Nor are there loans from Fayrouz, who is still alive, despite requests made via the family and entourage of the reclusive vocalist. Her section contains posters, album and magazine covers, photographs and other paraphernalia, some compiled by a dedicated fan.By contrast, the section on the half-Algerian, half-Lebanese diva Warda is full of her personal possessions: sunglasses, medals, earrings, passports, an oud instrument, a brown leather suitcase and an Agatha Christie crime novel. Born in the Paris suburbs, Warda made her debut as a child in her father’s cabaret in the city’s Latin Quarter and became a successful recording artist before moving to Algeria in 1962, the year the country gained independence from France. There, she married an army officer who stopped her from singing. Her career took off when she moved to Egypt a decade later.The exhibition gets racier as it goes along, culminating with the last wave of 20th-century Arab divas, including the Egyptian-born Dalida, who became a superstar in France. Interspersed among displays of sequined evening gowns, stilettos and powder compacts are video monitors that show a woman singing from a hot tub and rows of others lifting their legs in skimpy outfits worthy of the Folies Bergère.In the decades since, the place of female performers in Arab countries has changed. Islamist movements and migration from rural areas have made parts of society more conservative about women’s dress and public behavior. That has led to assumptions in the West that Arab women are veiled and constrained today, as opposed to the decades when the divas reigned. The Egyptian-born performer Dalida in Giza in 1959. She became a superstar in France.D.R. Orlando ProductionsTo Coline Houssais, the author of “Music of the Arab World: An Anthology of 100 Artists,” these then-versus-now perceptions, which the exhibition risked encouraging, were misguided.“There are two visions of the Arab world,” she said in an interview. “One is: ‘They’re barbarians, they’re Islamists.’ The other is: ‘Everything used to be so good before. It was a golden age.’”“The Arab world’s development is measured using ultra-Western criteria, such as whether women smoke or not, or whether they wear short skirts,” she said. There were “more important factors, to do with equality: the number of women who work, women’s civil rights,” she added.Despite the coronavirus epidemic, the show is a hit with Parisian museumgoers, and visitors to the exhibition appeared to validate Houssais’s assessment. On a recent afternoon, onlookers seemed intrigued by the story of these stars of yesterday, who bucked contemporary stereotypes about Muslim women in France.“It’s really very interesting to find out about the emancipation of women in these societies and to see the contrast with today, even in terms of hairstyles,” said Camille Hurel, 23, a visitor to the show. “These were strong personalities who were known all around the world.”“Nowadays, I have the feeling that there isn’t as much freedom of expression,” she added.Randa Mirza and Waël Kodeih’s installation, “The Last Dance” (2020), featured in the Paris show, brings together the two D.J.s with vintage footage, converted to a hologram.Thierry RambaudHoussais said that, in fact, the Arab world today was mostly populated with people under 30, a generation “glued to social media, completely open to the world, and leading their own private revolutions against their families and their communities.”The notions of family, community and religion were fading, and these societies were in the middle of a major “recomposition,” she noted.“There are still 1,000 places in the Arab world where you can wear a bikini, snort coke and listen to American music,” she added. More

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      Rediscovering France’s Early Female Playwrights

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      A growing movement within French theater is reclaiming the work of forgotten female artists, and reviving a lost concept: le matrimoine.PARIS — How many women had professional careers as playwrights in prerevolutionary France, between the 16th and 18th centuries? Go on, hazard a guess.The answer, according to recent scholarship, is around 150. Yet if you guessed the number was close to zero, you’re not alone. For decades, the default assumption has been that deep-seated inequality prevented women from writing professionally until the 20th century.Now a growing movement within French theater is reclaiming the work of forgotten female artists, and reviving a lost concept along the way: le matrimoine. Matrimoine is the feminine equivalent of patrimoine — translated as patrimony, or what is inherited from male ancestors. In French, however, patrimoine is also the catchall term to describe cultural heritage. By way of matrimoine, artists and academics are pushing for the belated recognition of women’s contribution to art history, and the return of their plays to the stage.Matrimoine is no neologism. “The word was used in the Middle Ages but has been erased,” said the scholar and stage director Aurore Evain. “Patrimoine and matrimoine once coexisted, yet at the end of the day all we were left with was matrimonial agencies.”When Dr. Evain started researching prerevolutionary female authors, around 2000, she quickly realized that French academics were behind their American peers. In the early 1990s, Perry Gethner, a professor of French at Oklahoma State University, had already translated plays by Françoise Pascal, Catherine Bernard and other 17th- and 18th-century women into English, and published them.At home, on the other hand, the idea that female colleagues of Molière had been overlooked collided with entrenched narratives. The classical French repertoire revolves around a trinity of male playwrights — Molière, Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille — whose works are taught in schools and widely seen as models of national literary genius.Yet all three men crossed paths with acclaimed female peers. “Le Favori” (“The Male Favorite”), a verse tragicomedy written in 1665 by Madame de Villedieu, was performed by Molière’s own company before the king at Versailles. When Dr. Evain staged it again in 2015, over three centuries after it was last performed, the French playwright and director Carole Thibaut was struck by the similarities between “Le Favori,” which revolves around a courtier who challenges the hypocrisy of royal favor, and Molière’s “Misanthrope,” written the next year.A portrait of Madame de Villedieu (1640-1683).The British Museum“I love Molière, but there are two scenes that are basically plagiarism,” Thibaut said in a phone interview. “He borrowed heavily from ‘Le Favori.’”Before the French Revolution, most female playwrights were upper-class single women who needed to earn a living. In the 19th century, their numbers kept growing: Scholars have found at least 350 women who were paid for their writing, from the revolutionary activist Olympe de Gouges to Delphine de Girardin, both of whom had plays in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française. Many of them hosted literary salons, starting with Germaine de Staël; some, like George Sand, also wrote under a pseudonym to get around gender-based prejudice.Yet not a single one of these women has a meaningful presence on the French stage today. Until the late 2000s, even feminist writers knew nothing of their work. The first volume of a French anthology of prerevolutionary female playwrights (edited by Dr. Evain, Gethner and the New York University professor Henriette Goldwyn) wasn’t released until 2007.When Thibaut, who is now at the helm of a National Dramatic Center in the city of Montluçon, first heard Dr. Evain speak at a conference two years later, the notion of matrimoine came as a revelation. “I fell apart. I started crying,” she said. “She taught me that instead of being at the dawn of a feminist awakening, we were part of a cycle, which sees women emerge and then be erased.”That historical insight coincided with a renewed focus on gender inequality in French theater, in the wake of two government audits. Until 2006, none of the five national French theaters had ever had a female director. There has been some progress since: While only 7 percent of national and regional dramatic centers, the next tier of public institutions, were led by women in 2006, the proportion was 27 percent in 2019. Still, in March, an open letter published in the French newspaper Libération complained about the lack of women being appointed to top theater jobs since the start of the pandemic.From 2009 onward, Thibaut, Dr. Evain and other activists joined forces through an association, known as HF, to push for change, and matrimoine became one of their rallying calls. In 2013, Dr. Evain launched the annual “Days of the Matrimoine,” a festival that runs alongside the “Days of the Patrimoine,” a national celebration of France’s cultural heritage.That visibility is now affecting younger generations of scholars and artists, like Julie Rossello Rochet, a playwright who completed a doctoral dissertation last year on her 19th-century predecessors. In a phone interview, she said that studying their work had helped her process the unease she felt as a young writer: “I kept hearing, ‘Oh, it’s so rare, a woman who writes for the stage.’ Actually, it isn’t.”A performance of  Madame Ulrich’s “La Folle Enchère” (“The Mad Bid”) directed by Aurore Evain. The play had its premiere in 1690 at the Comédie-Française.Carmen MariscalThe scholars interviewed agreed that women’s plays offer a different perspective from that of male playwrights — a female gaze, so to speak, shaped by the authors’ life experiences. “They promoted women’s intelligence,” Dr. Rossello Rochet said.“They created strong female characters, who choose politics over love, as well as male characters who choose love,” said Dr. Evain, who also pointed to the attention they paid to the role of fathers.The two prerevolutionary plays Dr. Evain has directed since 2015 speak to that originality. In addition to “Le Favori,” she brought back Madame Ulrich’s “La Folle Enchère” (“The Mad Bid”), a comedy that had its premiere in 1690 at the Comédie-Française. The plot cleverly toys with gendered expectations: In it, an older woman endeavors to marry a younger man, who is himself a woman in disguise. “It’s an early queer play, in which everything is upside down,” Dr. Evain said. “Order is never restored: The leading lady is in drag until the end.”While a handful of smaller theaters, like the Ferme de Bel Ebat in Guyancourt, have welcomed productions like “La Folle Enchère,” persuading programmers to invest in the matrimoine remains a challenge. The Comédie-Française, where multiple women have presented their work over the centuries, has yet to revive a single one of these plays.In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde in 2017, the troupe’s director, Eric Ruf, said he was “working on it,” but added that it would be hard to sell main-stage tickets for a “little-known” playwright. (A spokeswoman for the Comédie-Française declined to say whether there were plans to bring back plays by women in future seasons.)Yet feminists believe that unless these early women’s plays are performed and taught, history may yet repeat itself. “If we ignore our matrimoine, if we don’t change the way we think about our culture, the women who came after us may not leave a legacy, either,” Thibaut said.In the eyes of Dr. Rossello Rochet, the benefits are obvious for young playwrights. “Having a history has given me deeper roots,” she said. “It has made me feel stronger.” More

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      in Music

      Eddy de Pretto Is the Proud Sound of a New France

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      Born in the Paris suburbs, the singer has made waves with two albums that draw as much from ’60s chanson as contemporary hip-hop.Eddy de Pretto is now 27, and these days he sings on some of the largest stages in France — or he did, when the stages were open. When he was 21, he performed for a smaller audience: the tourists on the bateaux-mouches, the Paris sightseeing cruises that ply millions of people up and down the Seine.“It was a pretty crazy job. I was on the singing cruises, the ones where they serve you dinner,” de Pretto said in a recent video interview from Paris. From the little stage in the boat’s dining room, he recalled, he’d serenade tourists with syrupy Charles Trenet standards, to total indifference. “They were eating, looking out at the Eiffel Tower. They didn’t even realize someone was singing — they thought it was a soundtrack.”“But those three years on the bateaux-mouches were so completely typical of what it’s like to make a career,” he added. “It was totally formative to sing every night in front of people who didn’t give a damn at all.”Those lonely nights on the cruise ship are the origin of “À Tous Les Bâtards” (“To All the Bastards”), de Pretto’s second album, released in France last month. “I was waiting patiently to take the throne/And they’d sing my songs like I sang ‘La Vie en Rose,’” he belts on the first single, “Bateaux-Mouches,” whose started-from-the-bottom lyrics recall many a hip-hop boast. But name-checking both Rihanna and Édith Piaf as your lodestars? That’s rarer.De Pretto burst to fame in 2018 with his triple-platinum album “Cure,” and its blend of urban beats and chanson poetics was not its only uncommon attribute. There was his voice: big and vibrant, with every syllable articulated for the back of the house. There was his look: hoodies and tracksuits, a three-day beard, and a strawberry-blond tonsure like a medieval monk’s. And there was his biography: a young gay man, uninhibited and unperturbed, from the suburbs that Parisians still typecast as a cultural backwater.De Pretto started out singing on the tourist barges that ply the River Seine. “It was totally formative to sing every night in front of people who didn’t give a damn at all,” he said.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesHe was born in 1993 in Créteil, to the capital’s southeast. His father was a driver, and his mother a medical technician who revered an earlier generation of French singer-songwriters. “We lived in public housing, and my mother listened to a lot of Barbara, Brassens, Brel, Charles Aznavour,” he said. “She listened to it all the time, and really loud, too. Loud enough to hear it over the vacuum cleaner.”De Pretto said he played sports as a child, badly enough that his mother enrolled him in acting classes. The stage suited him. He landed a few small TV and movie roles. But his theatrical tendencies were not in harmony with the macho culture of the Paris suburbs.That tension inspired his breakout single, “Kid,” a mid-tempo ballad about parents and their effeminate sons. “You’ll be manly, my kid,” de Pretto sings over spare piano chords and digital hi-hats, though the song’s video shows him struggling to heed the call. Shirtless and sweat-soaked in the gym, de Pretto looks far too rangy to lift the massive barbells, trapped between family expectations and his true nature.“Every single word of ‘Kid’ is so wonderful,” said the singer Jane Birkin, who performed a duet with de Pretto in 2018. “He faced up to quite a lot of teasing, getting through in quite a tough neighborhood, with tough friends. And I should think he made himself respected — I wouldn’t mess around with him. And, at the same, time he has great fragility and great poignancy.”“Kid” was an instant hit in France, and seemed to come out of nowhere. De Pretto’s weighty voice sounded like a ’60s throwback, but he sang over spare, menacing, bass-heavy beats. The slangy lyrics had the vibrancy of the suburbs, but they were as poetic as they were acidic, with that French fixation on what de Pretto calls “the weight of the word.”For his first big TV appearance, in 2017, he performed with nothing but his own iPhone for accompaniment. The album cover of “Cure” had the same Gen-Z nonchalance: mirror selfie, phone in hand, leg hoisted on the kitchen table. A critic for the French newspaper Libération said astringently — but not without cause — that it looked like a late-night drunk pic sent to a Grindr hookup.Indeed, there was also de Pretto’s subject matter: furtive glances in the locker room, sloppy after-parties in darkened basements, grim evenings trawling the apps. On his spiky single “Fête de Trop” (“One Party Too Many”), he details the malaise of yet another evening getting high and “slipping my tongue into the salivating mouths” of “tonight’s boys.” “Jungle de la Chope” (“The Hookup Jungle”) delves into the “insipid conquests” of casual sex, safe or otherwise.Some gay musicians treat their homosexuality as a nonissue; others want to make it a mark of distinction. What made de Pretto’s debut so thrilling was that he did neither. He assumed his identity to the hilt, and thereby made it nothing special. “I’m writing from my point of view as a gay man,” he said. “But the songs are not a defense of being gay. I mean, yes, I’m gay, and I’m casting an eye on society.”De Pretto said his albums were about “breaking these fantasies and these received ideas of what happens in the suburbs,” and confounding a “stereotypical view of being gay.”Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesHe has, however, recorded one sideways pride anthem. “Grave” (“A Big Deal”) is a funny, filthy encouragement to anxious gay youth — think Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” for teens whose first view of same-sex intimacy comes through streaming video. It’s a catalog aria of gay rites of passage that, de Pretto sings, are “not a big deal”: scoping out classmates in gym class, fantasizing about your best friend, and many more not printable in a family newspaper. “Not living it: That’s a big deal!” goes the refrain.“If I had to compare him to anyone, it would be Christine and the Queens, although Eddy hasn’t exploded internationally,” said Romain Burrel, the editor of the French gay magazine Têtu. “Christine really opened the way for questions of gender and sexual orientation,” he said. “But Eddy is very, very French. There’s been a globalization of music, but when you listen to Eddy de Pretto, you’re in the 11th Arrondissement.”Musically, “À Tous Les Bâtards” sounds a lot like “Cure”: the same big voice, the same minimal beats. But de Pretto’s writing has become less angry, more confessional. “Désolé Caroline” (“Sorry Caroline”), its second single, sounds at first like a breakup song, addressed from a young gay man to the straight girl he cannot love. (In the interview, De Pretto described this kind of romantic rejection with the charming franglais verb “friendzoné.”)Then again, this “Caroline” — whom the singer wants to get out of “my veins” — may not be an actual girl. She may be a personification of cocaine: a double meaning he underlines in the music video, which features de Pretto in a white parka singing amid flurries of snow.“I love playing with these double meanings,” de Pretto said, “because it opens up the field of possibilities.” He certainly leaves the field open at the end of “À Tous Les Bâtards,” in the ingeniously smutty ballad “La Zone.” Here suburbs and sexuality become interchangeable, as de Pretto entreats us in a smooth falsetto to risk visiting … well, a certain area often considered dirty, or dangerous.“La zone,” in French slang, denotes a rough suburban neighborhood, the sort of place you might go to score drugs. But as de Pretto croons of the “dark pleasures” of a place where “some men are afraid to go,” we realize the particular zone he’s inviting you to is more anatomical than geographical. (Birkin said this song reminded her of “Sonnet du Trou de Cul,” a poem by Verlaine and Rimbaud written in 1871. “It’s a wonder people don’t talk about it more!” she added.)The Paris suburbs have birthed so many of France’s best singers and actors and artists, not to mention the reigning world champions of soccer. And yet western Europe’s largest and most diverse city still treats the towns outside its ring road as inaccessible places. “That was the whole project of the first and, I hope, this second album: breaking these fantasies and these ideas everyone has of what happens in the suburbs,” de Pretto said. “And of a pretty stereotypical view of being gay.”“That’s the job of an artist,” he said, “to find points of view that haven’t been found yet.” More

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      in Theater

      Poems! Songs! Demands! It’s Not Theater, but It’s … Something

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      Performing-arts protesters locked out by the pandemic have occupied playhouses across France, but drama is not allowed. Cue the “agoras.”Dozens of French theater workers walk into a room and occupy it. What happens next? A month later, not nearly as many performances as you might expect.Since early March, the performing arts sector has been in the grip of protests across France, where cultural institutions have been closed since October because of the coronavirus. After trade union representatives in Paris entered the shuttered Odéon Theater, a movement to occupy playhouses spread rapidly. Even as the country has entered a third lockdown, the occupations have shown no sign of diminishing: The number of venues taken over by artists, workers and students has remained around 100.Choreography on the balcony of the Odéon Theater in Paris on Sunday. The sign reads, “Odéon gagged.”Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesYet with the infection rate rising, the movement finds itself facing difficult options. Protesters can’t be seen to flout restrictions or draw large crowds, so there have been no impromptu plays or theatrical tableaux. The messaging has also been carefully adjusted: Instead of demanding the immediate reopening of cultural venues, the movement is calling for more government support and the withdrawal of changes to unemployment benefits.Yet public actions are needed to rally support. As a result, the occupiers have walked a fine, often awkward line amid art, safety and their political demands.The main point of contact between the protesters and the public has been “agoras,” a form of outdoor assembly halfway between a political rally and an open-mic session. The Odéon has staged daily agoras since early March, and some have drawn hundreds of bystanders; elsewhere, they are weekly or biweekly. Anyone wearing a mask is welcome.What happens at an agora depends on the luck of the draw. Prepared political statements read from smartphones are a recurring feature, with protesters from other economic sectors joining in to detail their own demands. The floor is generally open to anyone who wishes to put two cents in. Poems, songs and the odd flash mob or group improvisation bring a little motion to the proceedings.An art-therapy session at La Colline. Protesters and visitors were directed to draw on a large white canvas on the floor in front of the theater. Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesOn Sunday at La Colline, one of the first Paris theaters to be occupied, a three-hour agora started with an art-therapy session. Protesters and visitors were directed to draw on a large white canvas on the ground in front of the theater. Later, during the open-mic portion, three students recited a poem they had written, starting with the question “What do we live for?” Another participant read a text that employed swans as a metaphor for the current situation, asking the powers that be to “let us fly.”After attending half a dozen agoras, I can say with some confidence that the rewards are slim from an audience perspective. The format is barely even agitprop, as occupiers are trying hard not to do anything overtly theatrical — a necessary compromise, perhaps, yet one that makes for arguably limited visibility.If agoras start to look like actual performances, they are at risk of falling foul of the rules, which preclude all cultural events. Only demonstrations are allowed, and organizers must apply for permission. Some local authorities have been more amenable than others. Last Saturday, the Odéon’s daily agora was forbidden by the Paris prefecture, which declared it a “concealed cultural event.” Agoras were able to resume the next day, but without live music. (In the end, musicians were granted permission to return beginning last Monday.)Then there is the fear of public disapproval. On March 21, an unauthorized street carnival that drew thousands in Marseille prompted widespread condemnation, with some participants now facing legal action. Carla Audebaud, one of the drama students occupying the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, in eastern France, said in a phone interview that practicing their craft wasn’t the goal. “We’re trying not to make it look like a show,” she said.Drama students occupied the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, in eastern France week. The writing on their backs means “This country forgets, neglects.”Loïse BeauseigneurWhile most theater directors initially welcomed the occupations, the cohabitation has also grown tense during the third lockdown. In a statement over Easter, a coalition of protesters denounced their “self-proclaimed supporters,” saying, “We’re not fooled by some of your maneuvers aiming to make occupiers leave.”At La Colline, students pushed back against plans by the theater to reduce the number of authorized occupiers to six from 30 and limit access to showers and cooking facilities. The playhouse’s director, Wajdi Mouawad, discreetly attended their weekly agora Sunday and denied in an interview that the goal was to quash the occupation. “We’ve had positive tests among the theater’s team, and we decided to stop all rehearsals. We’re going to reduce the technical staff, and we’ve asked them to reduce their numbers, too,” he said, referring to the students.Mouawad added that he was sympathetic to the protesters. “They don’t have to obey us,” he said.Some protesters now wonder whether the focus on occupying physical venues was misguided. There have been attempts at guerrilla theater instead, with unannounced performances in symbolic public spaces. Last Saturday, dozens of topless students, with political slogans painted in black across their chests, popped up in front of the Ministry of Culture in Paris, chanting: “It’s not onstage that we’re going to die.”As with many agoras, the action was streamed live over Instagram, one avenue for protest that is certain not to create viral clusters. Still, the sprawling nature of the occupations around the country has made them difficult to follow even online. On Instagram, there are nearly as many accounts as there are venues, with the biggest drawing only a few thousand subscribers.Drama students at the T2G theater in Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris, last month. The movement there has focused on building local relationships.Chloé DestuynderIn that sense, the occupations are both everywhere and nowhere. They have energized a profession even as they have drawn tepid responses from the public and the government. Talks are underway between the Ministry of Culture and theater students, but no demands have been met.The effects are likely to be felt over the long term instead, as the movement has been an opportunity to learn and self-organize. At the Quai theater, in the western city of Angers, young actors have devised their own curriculum by inviting professionals to come and share their knowledge.Others have focused on building relationships at the local level. In Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris, the students occupying the T2G playhouse have taken to visiting the market weekly to meet inhabitants who have never been to the theater. Some of them now visit the agoras.The group has also asked locals to share their thoughts on camera as a way to collect material that may be used in future creations. “A lot is happening that we’re not seeing right now because we’re right in the middle of it,” Léna Bokobza-Brunet, one of the students, said. “When we’re no longer in this situation, maybe we’ll realize what ties it all together.” In all likelihood, the best pandemic-era political theater is yet to come. More

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      in Movies

      Bertrand Tavernier, 79, French Director With Wide Appeal, Dies

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      He was a regular on the world’s film festival circuit with movies like “Death Watch,” a science-fiction thriller, and “’Round Midnight,” about a jazz musician.Bertrand Tavernier, a French director best known in the United States for “’Round Midnight,” the 1986 film that earned Dexter Gordon an Oscar nomination for his performance as a New York jazz musician trying to get his life and career on track in Paris, died on Thursday in Sainte-Maxime, in southeastern France. He was 79.The Institut Lumiere, a film organization in Lyon of which he was president, posted news of his death on Facebook. The cause was not given.Mr. Tavernier made some 30 features and documentaries and was a regular on the film festival circuit, winning the best director award at Cannes in 1984 for “A Sunday in the Country,” what Roger Ebert called “a graceful and delicate story about the hidden currents in a family” headed by an aging painter living outside Paris.Mr. Tavernier had worked primarily as a film critic and publicist until 1974, when he directed his first feature, “The Clockmaker of St. Paul,” the story of a man whose son is accused of murder. The movie, more character study than crime drama, quickly established him in France and drew praise overseas.“‘The Clockmaker’ is an extraordinary film,” Mr. Ebert wrote, “the more so because it attempts to show us the very complicated workings of the human personality, and to do it with grace, some humor and a great deal of style.”The French actor Philippe Noiret played the father in that movie. The two would work together often, and teamed up again in 1976 in another tale about a murderer, “The Judge and the Assassin,” with Mr. Noiret playing the judge. The cast also included Isabelle Huppert, who would appear in other Tavernier films.Philippe Noiret in Mr. Tavernier’s first feature, “The Clockmaker of St. Paul” (1974). Mr. Tavernier and Mr. Noiret would work together often.Kino VideoMr. Tavernier was soon working with international casts. “Death Watch,” a 1980 science fiction thriller, starred Harvey Keitel as a television reporter who has an eye replaced with a camera so that he could surreptitiously film the last days of a woman — played by Romy Schneider — who seems to have a terminal disease.“’Round Midnight” featured a cast full of musicians — not only Mr. Gordon, a noted saxophonist, but also Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter and others, including Herbie Hancock, who won an Oscar for his original score.“The screenplay, by Mr. Tavernier and David Rayfiel, is both rich and relaxed, with a style that perfectly matches the musicians’,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times. “Some of the talk may well be improvised, but nothing sounds improvised, but nothing sounds forced, and the film remains effortlessly idiosyncratic all the way through.”Dexter Gordon as an expatriate American saxophonist and François Cluzet as a Parisian friend and admirer in Mr. Tavernier’s “’Round Midnight” (1986).Warner Bros. PicturesBertrand Tavernier was born on April 25, 1941, in Lyon to René and Ginette Tavernier. His father was a noted writer and poet. In a 1990 interview with The Times, Mr. Tavernier described an isolated boyhood.“My childhood was marked by loneliness because my parents didn’t get along well,” he said. “And it’s coming out in every movie. I’ve practically never had a couple in my films.”He mentioned the impact of his hometown.“It’s a very secretive city,” he explained. “My father used to say that in Lyon you learn that you must never lie but always dissemble, and it’s part of my films. The characters are often oblique in their relationships. Then there will be brief moments when they reveal themselves.”He was interested in film from a young age, and his early jobs in the film business included press agent for Georges de Beauregard, a noted producer of the French New Wave. He also wrote about film for Les Cahiers du Cinéma and other publications, and he continued to write throughout his career — essays, books and more. As a film historian, he was known for championing movies, directors and screenwriters who had been treated unkindly by others.In the foreword to Stephen Hay’s 2001 biography, “Bertrand Tavernier: The Film-maker of Lyon,” Thelma Schoonmaker, the noted film editor and widow of the director Michael Powell, credited Mr. Tavernier with resurrecting the reputation of Mr. Powell’s “Peeping Tom,” which was condemned when it was released in 1960 but is now highly regarded by many cinephiles.“Bertrand’s desire to right the wrongs of cinema history has a direct connection to the themes of justice that pervade his own films,” she wrote.Thierry Frémaux, the director of the Cannes festival and of the Institut Lumière, said Mr. Tavernier had been tireless in his advocacy.“Bertrand Tavernier has built the body of work that we know, but he built something else: being at the service of the history of cinema, of all cinemas,” Mr. Frémaux said by email. “He wrote books, he edited other people’s books, he did an extraordinary amount of film interviews, tributes to everyone he admired, film presentations.”“I’m not sure there are any other examples in art history of a creator so dedicated to the work of others,” he added.Jacques Gamblin, center, in Mr. Tavernier’s “Safe Conduct” (2002), about French filmmakers who worked during the German occupation in World War II.Empire PicturesMr. Tavernier’s own films sometimes set personal stories amid sweeping moments of history. “Life and Nothing But” (1989), set in 1920, had as a backdrop the search for hundreds of thousands of French soldiers still missing in action from World War I. “Safe Conduct” (2002) was about French filmmakers who worked during the German occupation in World War II.But Mr. Tavernier wasn’t interested in historical spectacle for its own sake.“Often people come to me and say you should do a film about the French Resistance, but I say this is not a subject, this is vague,” he told Variety in 2019. “Tell me about a character who was one of the first members of the Resistance and who did things that people later in 1945 say must be judged as crimes. Then I have a character and an emotion that I can deal with.”His survivors include his wife, Sarah, and two children, Nils and Tiffany Tavernier.Mr. Tavernier slipped humor into his movies, even a serious one like “Life and Nothing But,” which had a scene — with some basis in reality, he said — in which a distraught army captain has to quickly find an “unknown soldier” to be placed below the Arc de Triomphe.“The rush to find the Unknown Soldier is completely true, though we had to guess how it took place,” Mr. Tavernier said. “Just imagine: How do you find a body which is impossible to identify and still be sure he is French?”Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris. More