Journalist at RFI (ex-DW, BBC, CBC, F24...), writer (on art, music, culture...), I work in radio, podcasting, online, on films.
As a writer, I also contributed to the New Arab, Art UK, Byline Times, the i Paper...
Born in Paris, I was based in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering East Africa), Bangui, and in Bristol, UK. I also reported from Italy, Germany, Haiti, Tunisia, Liberia, Senegal, India, Mexico, Iraq, South Africa...
This blog is to share my work, news and cultural discoveries.
Comme chaque année en décembre, Transfuge met entre parenthèses les oeuvres et chef-d'oeuvres contemporains pour sonder les classiques. Le Père Noël 2016 n'est pas une ordure, il nous apporte Jerry Lewis, Jon Voight, Charles Dantzig, Simon Liberati et de nombreuses autres perles à mettre sous le sapin.
- LÉAUD DE 5 À 7
La Mort de Louis XIV met en lumière la présence incroyable d'un des plus grands acteurs de l'histoire du cinéma français. Jean- Pierre Léaud. Portrait Par Mélissa Chemam
- MACADAM COWBOY, DÉLIVRANCE, LE RETOUR :
rien que pour ces trois films l'acteur Jon Voight mérite le qualificatif de mythique. Transfuge l'a interviewé au Four Seasons de Beverly Hills. Introduction et propos recueillis par Jean-Paul Chaillet
--
Jean-Pierre et Albert Serra à L'avant-première de La Mort de Louis XIV,
Where Do You Draw The Line? An amazing documentary on the risks that is facing the Ecuadorian forest is launched online this Friday.
Written and produced by young enthusiastic first-time filmmakers from Bristol, known as WordSmith Production, the film is a courageous exploration of the situation of a very wild and well-preserved region of South America, having to deal with the cruel rules of oil exploitation. I've met with one of the filmmakers when in Bristol and the least I can say is that this team is committed and talented. They release this film for free and use the means of films for a great cause, it's a necessity to watch this film! Especially in this context. Watch the trailer:
More details on the film:
AMAZONIAN COMMUNITY UNITED AGAINST OIL FACES MASSIVE ATTACK
Narration by Daddy G of Massive Attack, including his own music composed exclusively for the film.
This documentary was filmed in Sani Isla and Ecuador’s capital city, Quito. It gives voice to an indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. To break the bond with the forest that has sustained their people for generations would be the death of their culture and community. Their resolve is tested in the face of corruption, bribery and greed as well as oil companies and the military threatening to take over the land by force.
At first glance it might appear that the community is just another victim of big oil’s need to feed ‘our’ collective habit. But a more complex story emerges: China taking over the role of the IMF and World Bank funding overseas development in return for oil; well-meaning but under resourced and ultimately failing, local government and worldwide initiatives; the international community turning a blind eye; blatant denial of indigenous rights; as well
as the desires of the community themselves, to develop in line with modern expectations.
Biologists classify this region as one of the most bio-diverse regions on the planet. To extract oil in what we all know as ‘the lungs of the earth’ for 8 days worth of oil (at current rates of world consumption) would bring this particular ecosystem to the brink of collapse. In a globalised world of mass consumption run on fossil fuels, could we all play in a part in the destruction of this pristine rainforest? If so, 'Where do you draw the line?'
The film features:
- Academics who explain the government’s push for oil in order to fund development;
- Leading researchers who demonstrate the unique species and rich biodiversity existing within the region;
- Community members explaining their long history in the area, and their plans for a sustainable future based on eco-tourism for future generations, as well as the lengths they will go to in order to protect their community;
- A government minister who was part of a now cancelled initiative which could have saved the region entirely.
- Covertly captured footage of an oil production platform guarded by the military (many camera crews have tried and failed to gain access)
- Footage of an oil slick which flowed down through Ecuador into Peru and The Amazon itself.
-
Production notes:
Produced by three recent uni-graduate friends, all 3 from Bristol and who went off to Ecuador on a self-funded whim having saved up for a year after reading a newspaper article in The Guardian.
They had no experience of film making and learned everything along the way.
Looking through the footage it became clear that they had captured a snapshot of a global issue with lasting implications for us all.
Friends of Daddy G suggested he might be interested in helping raise awareness.
Recognising the importance of the subject matter, he recorded his voiceover in between tours having become committed to the project.
Released with the intention of raising awareness and educating, this film is not expected to generate any profit.
As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and class less and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
Music
"Working Class Hero (2010 - Remaster)" by John Lennon
Europe is lost, America lost, London is lost, Still we are clamouring victory. All that is meaningless rules, And we have learned nothing from history.
People are dead in their lifetimes, Dazed in the shine of the streets. But look how the traffic keeps moving. The system’s too slick to stop working. Business is good. And there’s bands every night in the pubs, And there’s two for one drinks in the clubs.
We scrubbed up well We washed off the work and the stress Now all we want’s some excess Better yet; A night to remember that we’ll soon forget.
All of the blood that was shed for these cities to grow, All of the bodies that fell. The roots that were dug from the ground So these games could be played I see it tonight in the stains on my hands.
The buildings are screaming I cant ask for help though, nobody knows me, Hostile and worried and lonely. We move in our packs and these are the rites we were born to Working and working so we can be all that we want Then dancing the drudgery off But even the drugs have got boring. Well, sex is still good when you get it.
To sleep, to dream, to keep the dream in reach To each a dream, Don’t weep, don’t scream, Just keep it in, Keep sleeping in What am I gonna do to wake up?
I feel the cost of it pushing my body Like I push my hands into pockets And softly I walk and I see it, it’s all we deserve The wrongs of our past have resurfaced Despite all we did to vanquish the traces My very language is tainted With all that we stole to replace it with this, I am quiet, Feeling the onset of riot. But riots are tiny though, Systems are huge, The traffic keeps moving, proving there’s nothing to do.
It’s big business baby and its smile is hideous. Top down violence, structural viciousness. Your kids are doped up on medical sedatives. But don’t worry bout that. Worry bout terrorists.
The water levels rising! The water levels rising! The animals, the polarbears, the elephants are dying! Stop crying. Start buying. But what about the oil spill? Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport.
Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them. Live porn streamed to your pre-teens bedrooms. Glass ceiling, no headroom. Half a generation live beneath the breadline.
Oh but it's happy hour on the high street, Friday night at last lads, my treat! All went fine till that kid got glassed in the last bar, Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou, It was madness, the road ran red, pure claret. And about them immigrants? I cant stand them. Mostly, I mind my own business. But they’re only coming over here to get rich. It’s a sickness. England! England! Patriotism!
And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?
Work all your life for a pittance, Maybe you’ll make it to manager, Pray for a raise Cross the beige days off on your beach babe calendar.
Anarchists desperate for something to smash Scandalous pictures of glamorous rappers in fashionable magazines Who’s dating who? Politico cash in an envelope Caught sniffing lines off a prostitutes prosthetic tits, And it's back to the house of lords with slapped wrists They abduct kids and fuck the heads of dead pigs But him in a hoodie with a couple of spliffs – Jail him, he’s the criminal
It's the BoredOfItAll generation The product of product placement and manipulation, Shoot em up, brutal, duty of care, Come on, new shoes. Beautiful hair.
Bullshit saccharine ballads And selfies And selfies
And selfies And here’s me outside the palace of ME!
Construct a self and psyhcosis And meanwhile the people are dead in their droves But nobody noticed, Well actually, some of them noticed, You could tell by the emoji they posted.
Sleep like a gloved hand covers our eyes The lights are so nice and bright and lets dream But some of us are stuck like stones in a slipstream What am I gonna do wake up?
We are lost We are lost We are lost And still nothing Will stop Nothing pauses
We have ambitions and friends and our courtships to think of Divorces to drink off the thought of
The money The money The oil
The planet is shaking and spoiled Life is a plaything A garment to soil The toil the toil. I cant see an ending at all. Only the end.
How is this something to cherish? When the tribesmen are dead in their deserts To make room for alien structures, Develop Develop
Lazarides is about to add to your South Bank experience by opening a new gallery dedicated to Banksy prints! The gallery will be called "Banksy Print Gallery" and will be primarily selling secondary market Banksy Prints.
So, let's time-warp back and recap on the connection Lazarides gallery has with Banksy. It all started in the early 1990's, Steve Lazarides was working at a photoshoot for Sleaze Nation magazine and he met Banksy. Steve went on to work with Banksy for a number of years and this helped create the buzz and controversy around "street art" that we know today.
Over the years Banksy art has become more and more popular, with several artists trying to copy his work and murals being located all over the globe. The "Banksy Print Gallery" will simply be celebrating his work and offering the public the chance to buy his prints. All of this, just in time for Christmas.
In the words of Steve Lazarides, "This gallery will sell secondary market Banksy prints and will also have a collection of my photographs from our time together, as well as displaying ephemera from the period."
The gallery itself opens to the public Friday 2nd (December 2016).
-
Address: 22 Upper Ground, London, SE1 9PD (The gallery is based in the Mondrian London hotel)
Opening Times: Tuesday–Saturday 11am–7pm Admission is free
Stumbling upon all these verses...
This beautiful book of poems by William Butler Yeats is always by my side in my bedroom, and here I opened it tonight while listening to some Irish more modern poetry sent by an artist friend.
"The Wild Swans at Coole"
by W.B. Yeats
(read by Tom O'Bedlam)
--
In Memory of Major Robert Gregory
I
Now that we're almost settled in our house I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us Beside a fire of turf in th' ancient tower, And having talked to some late hour Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed: Discoverers of forgotten truth Or mere companions of my youth, All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.
II
Always we'd have the new friend meet the old And we are hurt if either friend seem cold, And there is salt to lengthen out the smart In the affections of our heart, And quarrels are blown up upon that head; But not a friend that I would bring This night can set us quarrelling, For all that come into my mind are dead.
III
Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, That loved his learning better than mankind, Though courteous to the worst; much falling he Brooded upon sanctity Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed A long blast upon the horn that brought A little nearer to his thought A measureless consummation that he dreamed.
IV
And that enquiring man John Synge comes next, That dying chose the living world for text And never could have rested in the tomb But that, long travelling, he had come Towards nightfall upon certain set apart In a most desolate stony place, Towards nightfall upon a race Passionate and simple like his heart.
V
And then I think of old George Pollexfen, In muscular youth well known to Mayo men For horsemanship at meets or at racecourses, That could have shown how pure-bred horses And solid men, for all their passion, live But as the outrageous stars incline By opposition, square and trine; Having grown sluggish and contemplative.
VI
They were my close companions many a year, A portion of my mind and life, as it were, And now their breathless faces seem to look Out of some old picture-book; I am accustomed to their lack of breath, But not that my dear friend's dear son, Our Sidney and our perfect man, Could share in that discourtesy of death.
VIl
For all things the delighted eye now sees Were loved by him; the old storm-broken trees That cast their shadows upon road and bridge; The tower set on the stream's edge; The ford where drinking cattle make a stir Nightly, and startled by that sound The water-hen must change her ground; He might have been your heartiest welcomer.
VIII
When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace; At Mooneen he had leaped a place So perilous that half the astonished meet Had shut their eyes; and where was it He rode a race without a bit? And yet his mind outran the horses' feet.
lX
We dreamed that a great painter had been born To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn, To that stern colour and that delicate line That are our secret discipline Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might. Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, And yet he had the intensity To have published all to be a world's delight.
X
What other could so well have counselled us In all lovely intricacies of a house As he that practised or that understood All work in metal or in wood, In moulded plaster or in carven stone? Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, And all he did done perfectly As though he had but that one trade alone.
XI
Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare. Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, As 'twere all life's epitome. What made us dream that he could comb grey hair?
XII
I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind go All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved Or boyish intellect approved, With some appropriate commentary on each; Until imagination brought A fitter welcome; but a thought Of that late death took all my heart for speech.
from THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE (1919) by W illiam Butler Yeats
--
--
In February 1918, Robert Gregory, a major in the British air force, died while fighting in battle over Italy. In the eyes of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Robert Gregory was a fine, young, Renaissance man, whom he described as a “soldier, scholar, horseman.” To help his dear friend Lady Gregory cope with the loss of her son and to ease his own pain, Yeats writes the poem, “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory.” Many scholars suggest that this poem is the finest elegy in the English language since Lycidas. In the poem, Yeats compares Robert Gregory to three deceased friends, each of whom exhibits a characteristic that Robert Gregory embodies. In writing this poem, Yeats’s attempt at catharsis fails, as he realizes that his emotions in response to the death are beyond words. A mere poem cannot fully express his grief or commemorate a man’s life. Although he has learned to appreciate the value of human life, Yeats must come to terms with the loss of his friend before he can come of age.
By writing this elegy, W.B. Yeats glorifies Major Robert Gregory and seeks to provide comfort for Lady Gregory and himself. Losing a friend is tough, and the reader can relate with Yeats's dilemma. Throughout his life, Yeats has used his poetry as a means for solving his problems. A coming-of-age process involves a person learning about himself, and therefore, during the Middle Yeats period, he usually comes-of-age after writing a poem. However, this poem is an exception because it is one of four poems dedicated to Robert Gregory--it takes four full poems for Yeats to accept Gregory's death. "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" was not written for only one man but for an entire generation of youth who died in the horrors of war. Major Robert Gregory symbolizes all the promising youth who fell to an early death. In memorializing Robert Gregory, Yeats remembers three of his dear friends who also died young. Each of these men had a third of what Yeats considers to be perfection, and Robert Gregory was the synthesis of these traits. Robert Gregory was in harmony with mind, spirit, and body, as a "soldier, scholar, horseman." He excelled at every task he set to do, and that is why Yeats labels him as "life's epitome." Yeats's healing process is a microcosm of Europe's reconstruction following the first world war. Deep wounds with "salt to lengthen out the smart" take a lifetime to overcome, and neither Yeats nor Europe has shown any sign of coming of age. Yeats ends his poem in speechless frustration. Europe has a second world war just twenty years later. The poem provokes the reader to re-evaluate his own experiences with death. If writing to achieve catharsis works for Yeats, then it might for the reader. Following the death of a loved one, the reader must not keep his emotions bottled inside. Accordingly, Yeats avoids the dangers of not facing the reality of death, and, at the same time, teaches the reader a lesson by venting his emotions through poetry.
Yesterday, at the Walrus record shop, Paris 10 art, we were talking about the evolution of Massive Attack's sound, with the inspired talk show host, Frederique Labussiere, from French radio FIP, the Nordest bookstore's owner, Patrick, and a couple of dozens fans and readers of my book.
To display a representation of the band's stage evolution, which represent a lot for them who have always been willing to deliver a message through visuals and performances, here are a few clips, one from the very creative area of the mid 1990s, comprising two songs - and three other live extracts from this year, 20 years later.
Enjoy.
Massive Attack - Live From "The White Room"-
Channel 4 - 2nd March 1996
"The White Room" was a Channel 4 music show that aired during the 1990's, and hosted by Mark Radcliffe. This is Massive Attack's two song performance from the show that aired on the 2nd March 1996.
Tracklist: 01. Karmacoma 02. Eurochild (Euro Zero Zero)
Massive Attack - 'Girl I Love You' - Live at O2 Apollo,
Manchester, 28/01/2016
Massive Attack feat. Martina Topley-Bird - 'Clock Forward'
- Zénith de Paris - 27/02/2016 - France
Massive Attack & Tricky - 'Take It There' - Hyde Park, London, July 2016
..."You carried all my hopes Until something broke inside"...
PJ Harvey - 'We Float'
"We Float"
We wanted to find love We wanted success Until nothing was enough Until my middle name was excess And somehow I lost touch When you went out of sight When you got lost into the city Got lost into the night
I was in need of help Heading to black out 'Til someone told me run on in honey Before somebody blows your goddam' brains out You shop-lifted as a child I had a model's smile You carried all my hopes Until something broke inside
But now we float Take life as it comes
So will we die of shock? Die without a trial Die on Good Friday While holding each other tight This is kind of about you This is kind of about me We just kind of lost our way But we were looking to be free
