#french things

[calimera62]

Pendant ce temps, sur Twitter...

[ill-never-use-it]

Just so you know: in France there's a VERY famous character named Guignol. He's a puppet and was created in fucking 1808 and we still have puppet shows about him, he's "children's first friend" ! Everybody knows him and children have loved him since the bloody 19th century. Guignol is an ordinary man who struggles with money and have real life problems (like Donald Duck in some ways) and always carries a big stick around. Why ? TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF POLICE OFFICERS.

I'm not kidding. The typical Guignol story is: an innocent woman is being attacked by a policeman who wants to arrest her for nothing, the puppeteer then turns the puppet of the woman towards the audience and asks the children "He can't do that ! (or "he's not allowed to do that") Can he ?" and the children are encouraged to shout "NO ! HE CAN'T !" as loud as they can. Then the puppet woman and the children all call Guignol for help and he saves the day by beating the police officer's ass with a big stick and saving the innocent woman.

Now, I know that Guignol is 100% french but if he ever goes to the United States, I'll tell him to pay his respects to ICE agents.

[outofutopia]

Allez

[mask131]

With all this talk about an animated production being released in theaters by a small rising company very unlike the big media corporations... Let me make a proper introduction to the "Jim Queen" movie.

I already shared before a trailer of it without any context. You might have heard more about it recently because it was one of the midnight screenings of the Cannes Festival.

"Jim Queen", of its full name "Jim Queen and the quest for the Chloroqueer", is a gay satire-comedy cartoon produced by Bobbypills (in fact they are proud to present it as their first movie). They are known for various works such as "Peepoodo" or "Vermin", though I don't know much about them... But I DO know about THE work that boosted their fame in the first place: "Les Kassos" (which I think got an English translation at one point, as "The Wakos"? or maybe "The Dorks"?). An irreverent, very dark, very goofy and funny adult cartoon about the famous characters of children's media and entertainment become "social cases" as they passed their prime, and turning into grotesque caricatures of themselves. Lot of sex, lot of swears and lot of blood occurs as they all come in the office of the same tired social agent. Think a bit of it as a French spiritual successor to "Meet the Feebles" (though the Wikipedia page rather invites people to compare it to "Robot Chicken").

But back to Jim Queen: it shall get official theater screenings around mid June. It had an online funding in association with to ACT (Against Conversion Therapy) - though I heard some people say the funding campaign actually couldn't be completed despite the movie going out, so either they found the money elsewhere either they completed the cartoon with lower quality than what they intended? But you're not here to hear about money problem - you're here to see HUGE SEXY GAY MEN.

The story follows two protagonists. Jim Perfect, the most famous gay influencer of all of Paris, and Lucien, his twink self-proclaimed "number one follower". The two of them are forced into a quest for the mysterious remedy known as the "chloroqueer" (yes it is a chloroquine joke) when a mysterious epidemy spreads around queer people - the Heterosis, which turns homosexuals into heteros. And Jim just learned he contracted it - meaning soon he shall lose his fashion sense, his perfect-body obsession and his enjoyment of prostate-orgasm, in short everything that makes his identity. [Some clickbaity article made the plot sound very VERY different by just summing it up as "A gay influencer faces a virus" and stopped there]. In fact this is how Lucien will go from his first to his very last follower as his heterosexuality makes him lose everything and only Lucien is willing to remain by his side, even if he becomes... *shivers* an heterosexual.

The movie presents itself as dedicated to the Parisian queer scene, and the adventures of the duo will take them through caricatural versions of some of the "most famous landmarks of the gay community" in Paris, according to what was promised on the funding page. One of the two main creators of the movie, Marco Nguyen, also proudly claims he is the co-creator of the "MercrediX" and "VendrediX", the "hottest gay afterworks of Paris" which... I'll have to trust his word onto, I haven't been in Paris in a WHILE. At least in this part of Paris. Last time I went there it was to go in a bookshop-spree and I almost got hit by bikes four times in a row - and only twice was I actually near a road. Parisian bike-riders are the most dangerous bike-riders of France, let me tell you that. Foutus vélos parisiens va... Enfin bref.

So this was their project: to create, in their own words, a "politically incorrect, irreverent comedy for all to gather around, heteros or LGBTQIA+" which shall reveal "all what the gay people live through and that nobody dares to tell". (Have I mentionned that one scene included some BDSM-elderly-Nazi-styled guy locking up someone in an Iron Maiden with dildos instead of spikes? And that the bears in this movie are ACTUAL humanoid bears?).

They also managed to bring on the cast Elisabeth Wiener, who is quite a famous voice actor in France for doing the roles of Cruella, Yzma or Winifred Sanderson. She plays Lucien's mother, an homophobic health minister who is the main reason Lucien stays in the closet and is basically an awkward "first-time gay"... (A thinly-veiled caricature of Christine Boutin). La Briochée is also part of the cast, this drag queen that you might know for being the French voice of Angel Dust. And there's also Philippe Katerine who you might (unfortunately) know from that one Olympic Games performance... (Before he was more better known for his song "Louxor j'adore") - he plays *puts on glasses*... Lucien's prostate. No that's not a type, Lucien actually has a scene during which his prostate appears to him in a divine vision. It is that type of movie.

Their funding page included quite interesting bonuses specifically for animation fans - as in, traditional animation fans, because while computers and tablets replaced a lot of the paper-work, they offered to recreate animatons cellulos based on the animation files so people could have them for supporting the movie, with a certificate of authenticity.

Of course I can't say any more given the movie is not yet released to the public and I was not at the Cannes festival... But as I said before, it has been announced as THE gay comedy of France this year, so we shall see!

[echo-s-land]

French either 'stealing' words from English AND THEN not using them in the same context English would/not giving them the same definition is as hilarious as French coming up with words that sound like anglicisms but aren't because they don't actually exist in English

[adarkrainbow]

I was just checking my morning Youtube page when I was suggested this video. "Fairytales of Oc - The cabrette player"

This is through this video that I discovered that the Occitanie-region branch of France 3 (the regional channel of France, with specific sub-channels for every region of France) was producing these animated shorts about typical Occitanie fairytales, and was reposting them on Youtube, all fresh... But not French.

Because checking another video, about the tale "The three oranges", confirmed that the tales are told in the occitan language (with French subtitles), hence the name "Tales of Oc".

All this needs a brief cultural explanation however for those unfamiliar with the French language... Yes just like with other languages, French had evolutions. You have contemporary French, modern French, new French, middle French, old French the further you go back in time. Like Old English, Old German, all these things. BUT... Before the French language was unified and united (which took a very long time) there was actually a LOT of Frenches, not just one language but a lot of dialects and regional languages. And of all of them, two specific languages rose up as the "main ones" of France. One was the "oïl language", which was spoken in the northern part of France, the other was the "oc language" spoken in the southern part of France. Roughly speaking, it was the "two Frenches", to simply things. Their divide was very present in early and mid-Middle Ages, and this shows in language. For example, the "minstrel" (ménestrel in French) existed in two types, speaking the two languages: trouvères in the North, making songs in oïl language, troubadours in the South, making oc poetry. (The North-South divide is usually geographically pointed with the Loire river, the "natural frontier").

In the end, the "oïl" language is the one that won and evolved into mainstream, current French, imposing itself over the "oc" language, who only survived in regional southern tongues, dialects such as the occitan that these fairytales are being told into (here is another video about "The Drac")

You might have heard of Occitanie recently if you went by the folk-songs side of Youtube as there's a lot of Occitan songs being shared around, with a lot of foreigners enjoying deeply the Occitan sounds (or the pseudo-Occitan sounds sometimes...). Songs like "Ai vist lo lop", the Occitan variation of the famous song "I saw the wolf, the fox and the hare". Anyway.

These videos do not have English subtitles, only French ones. The fact they say this is the "Occitan version" implies there's a French version somewhere to double it? But so far, if you are curious about modern fairytale animations with a regional language, this series is being released on Youtube. Here is a last episode for now, "The sunken city"

[passigentilcoquelicot]

Et on pense à s’inscrire sur les listes électorales et/ou à faire sa procuration pour les élections municipales les 15 et 22 mars !

A part si vous votez Raciste National, là c’est pas la peine aller donc à la pêche

[somuchbetterthanthat]

Tous les gens français/ francophones de tumblr vous pourriez mettre un like à ce post pour que je sache si ça vaut le coup d'avoir de la promo de petite maison d'édition indépendante de l'imaginaire ici ou c'est un doux rêve et que vous nous mangeriez pour x ou y raisons si on mettait un pied ici