The 2011 Franco-Irish Literary Festival took place in various locations in Dublin on the 8th, 9th and 10th of April 2011. It is an annual event that brings together all sorts of creative people such as writers, poets, film makers and their audience to discuss a specific theme.
The theme of this year's festival was generations. The organisers invited writers from Ireland, France and elsewhere, who have covered an aspect of the theme in their work, be it poetry, novels, plays, films or whatever, to discuss how they treated the theme with a panel of their peers. As usual there were some big names invited to speak at the festival and it was great to hear them live and to have an opportunity to ask them questions.
Two of the speakers on Saturday 9 April were particularly interesting.
The first was Eric Fottorino who was introduced as having been a 'grand reporter' for the French newspaper Le Monde. He spoke about his own family background which he has written about in his book Questions à mon père . The book deals with the fact that he was not raised by his biological father (who was a Moroccan Jew) and that he only met him in later life. As the title suggests, the book is a series of questions that Fottorino put to his biological father and the answers he received. He asked him what it means to be a Jew and his father replied that to be a Jew means to be scared or worried, avoir peur in French.
I thought about this for a minute and remembered that when I heard the French writer, Azouz Begag, speaking in University College Cork on the previous day, he said that for him, to be a Muslim in France today also means to be scared or worried. I suppose fear or worry means different things to different people, but it is interesting that the both of them feel fearful, even though they are very different. Could it have something to do with the fact that they both come from minority groups in France, I don't know, but I just thought it was interesting that two such different people would use the same language to describe their place in French society.
Secondly, Virginie Linhart who is a French documentary film maker spoke about growing up with two parents who wanted nothing more than to spread Maoism throughout France and the world. Both parents played a big part in what has become known as Mai '68, when students and factory workers all over France went on strike to demanded major cultural and societal change. Her parents got jobs in factories to organise the workers and spread the Maoist gospel. Her dad worked in a Renault factory, while her mother worked in an industrial meat factory.
Virginie Linhart said that she recently made a documentary featuring the children of many of the leaders of Mai '68. She found it difficult to sell the documentary to television stations, she said, and was told that audiences are not very interested in those events anymore. She said that the children of the strike leaders, who are adults now, are not involved in politics of any kind. To explain their volte-face, she likened their rejection of all things political to the children of alcoholics, who abstain from alcohol because they see what effect it had on their parents. Her parents went on to work as a sociologist and biophysicist, seemingly leaving their Maoist beliefs far behind them.
I really enjoyed the festival and I hope to attend again next year.
The 1st photo shows Geneviève Brisac, the moderator and then Caitriona O'Reilly and Carlo Gébler.
The 2nd photo shows Eric Fottorino, Julia Franck, the moderator and Véronique Ovaldé and Siobhan Parkinson.
The 3rd photo shows Virginie Linhart together with the two moderators.
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