The COVID-19 lockdown forced the team running Paris’ La Clef cinema to close their auditorium to moviegoers. So they hit on an alternative: Projecting movies onto the wall of an adjacent building.
“We said to ourselves: ‘If we can no longer show films to an audience inside a cinema, let’s take away the walls and show films outside,’” organizer Derek Woolfenden told reporters on Friday, shortly before the screening of 1955 Western Man Without a Star, starring Kirk Douglas.
Under the lockdown restrictions, Parisians are confined to their apartments except for brief outings to shop for food and exercise.
Photo: Reuters
However, they can catch the movie by looking out their windows or stepping out onto their balcony.
“We could feel a desire in the neighborhood for some sort of event, because there’s nothing left, the streets are empty, it’s very sad,” Woolfenden said.
The La Clef team took pains to engage the local community in its initiative: The titles to be screened each week are chosen in consultation with the neighbors.
“It’s great,” said Christine Davenier, an illustrator, who was watching the film from her balcony, where she sat propped up on pillows. “It takes us back to before, to screenings when we watched films all together.”
The La Clef officially closed its doors in April 2018, and the owners plan to sell the property.
However, since September last year the building has been occupied by an association of cinephiles and independent movie makers, headed up by Woolfenden, who oppose the sale and say they would stay put to ensure the building continues to serve as a cinema.
Newly married and with his first child on the way, auto worker Wang (王) wanted to move into the apartment he bought in Wuhan three years ago, but those hopes were dashed by China’s ballooning property crisis. Saddled with nearly US$300,000 in debt and with his unit nowhere near completion, the 34-year-old decided he had enough and stopped making mortgage payments. He is among numerous home buyers across dozens of cities in China who have boycotted payments over fears that their properties will not be completed by cash-strapped, debt-laden developers. “They said construction would resume soon,” Wang said, only giving his surname. “But
‘COMMON THREATS’: In a speech marking the end of Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula, Yoon Suk-yeol said he wants to ‘swiftly ... improve’ relations with Tokyo South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Monday said Japan is a partner as the two countries face “common threats,” offering to improve ties between the allies of the US whose help Washington has sought in putting up a united front against the likes of China, Russia and North Korea. Yoon said in a speech to mark Japan’s World War II surrender and the end of its 1910-1945 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula that he wants to “swiftly and properly improve” relations with Tokyo stemming from historical disputes. “When Korea-Japan relations move toward a common future, and when the mission of
NATIONAL SECURITY PRIORITY: Former US president Donald Trump might have retained nuclear codes after leaving the White House last year, a weapons expert said FBI agents were looking for secret documents about nuclear weapons among other classified material when they searched former US president Donald Trump’s Florida home on Monday, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. The newspaper cited people familiar with the investigation as saying that nuclear weapons documents were thought to be in the trove the FBI was hunting in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. They did not specify what kind of documents, or whether they referred to the US arsenal or another country’s. The report came hours after US Attorney General Merrick Garland said he had personally authorized the US government request for a search
PLEAS FOR PEACE: After dozens of vehicles had been destroyed, Tijuana’s mayor told gangs the city would ‘take care of its citizens,’ and asked them to leave bystanders alone Hundreds of Mexican military troops were on Saturday flown into Tijuana to beef up street patrols after armed gangs hijacked and burned at least a dozen vehicles in the border city, the latest in a wave of attacks hitting civilians across the country. The US consulate in Tijuana instructed its employees “to shelter in place until further notice” around midnight on Friday because of the violence, as the Tijuana hijackings snarled traffic across the city and temporarily blocked access to one of the world’s busiest border crossings. About 350 national guard troops were flown in to reinforce thousands of federal troops already