Comedian, actor, screenwriter, director, Ricky Gervais is one of the leading figures of English humor, but also the hero of the moving series Afterlife, telling, over three seasons, the life of a widower so overwhelmed by the death of his wife that he sends loved ones and strangers for a walk in a jubilant waltz studded with swear words and obscene gestures. But his bonhomie catches up with him, and an infinite tenderness infuses his cynical exits and his shocking actions. That’s how he is, Ricky: unfiltered, but tender under his brute veneer, outrageous, but humanistic. And deeply committed to freedom of expression – even, and especially when it scratches. For his second one-man-show produced by Netflix, SuperNature, he talks about his cats, his relationship to calories, his atheism, his childhood memories… but he also talks about transsexuality, neofeminism and cancel culture, with a freedom of tone that Already earning him volleys of green wood from woke circles. A sample ? “I know what it’s like to be outnumbered,” he says. (In the UK) it’s only 5% black, 5% Asian and 5% LGBTQ. This is little. I’m a white, straight, multi-millionaire man. We are less than 1%. Am I complaining? No. Come on, admit it: you laughed.
Imagine a world where the roles of men and women are reversed. A world where men are harassed in the RER by women with insistent eyes, a world where a 30-year-old teacher is in a relationship with a young 18-year-old twink whom she bullies. But above all a world in which pornographic films are shot and produced by women for the sole pleasure of women, where men are reduced to the status of objects of fantasy. That’s the premise of Ordinary People, the singular series written and directed by former pornstar Ovidie. In a fairly light tone, the series tells how Romain (Jérémy Gillet seen in the Mixte series or in L’Île aux 30 coffins), a young sociology student, decides to “do porn” as one would commit an act of rebellion. The story takes place in the late 1990s, at a time when porn was still viewed on VHS and sold on newsstands. Ovidie denounces ordinary sexism with a drop of humour, without lecturing.
Very ordinary people, every Monday on Canal Décalé (on MyCanal)
Phases, by Moonchild Sanelly (Transgressive Records). In concert on June 15 at the Arena of Vienna in the first part of Gorillaz.
See an Afrofuturist tale danced after walking through the chiefdoms of Cameroon? These two journeys in space and time are compatible for three dates at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum. The Cameroonian artist-performer, songwriter and writer, Blick Blassy, one-man band of the program that accompanies the exhibition “On the road to the chiefdoms of Cameroon”, has carte blanche: for three performances, in a tale entitled Bikutsi 3000, he imagines an Africa ruled by women. Between fiction and historical reality, here is the Queen of Nkolmesseng liberating the continent (in five paintings corresponding to five colonized countries) thanks to her army of women whose only weapon is… dance… in the tradition of bikutsi, music and dance of the Cameroon practiced by Beti women to relieve ailments. Admittedly, women were not all powerful in the ancient kingdoms of the 16th century which became, during colonization, “chiefdoms”, but in this region of north-west Cameroon, the queens of today have powers invisible to discover precisely in the exhibition “From visible to invisible”. Once you have passed through the front door of a traditional chiefdom, with its characteristic conical roofs, you will find sculpted pillars, thrones and masks, fetishes, totems, calabashes, textiles, costumes, headdresses… so many “cultural goods” as they are named in situ, who each have their role in the daily life of the chiefdoms which are still active and yet guardians of their magnificent heritage. Everything (230 pieces out of 270 exhibited) has arrived in Paris, and is leaving for the country in mid-July: so we rush!
Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum, exhibition until July 17. Bikutsi 3000 to see on June 17, 18 and 19. As well as “Future Lullaby: the lullaby of yesterday, today and tomorrow”, an audiovisual installation by Blick Bassy (on view until Sunday, September 25).
Connect to the Himalayas
This is the beautiful story of the moment. A film that never ceases to seduce, winner of around twenty awards, even representing his country – Bhutan – at the Oscars… Ugyen lives in Thimbu, the capital. In a year, when he has finished his teacher training, he will travel to Australia to sing in the bars of Sydney. The young man is English-speaking, dresses in Western style and does not let go of his smartphone. But before fulfilling his dream of exile, he was offered to teach for a year at Lunana, located 3,400 meters above sea level. Without enthusiasm, Ugyen makes the trip. He will have to get off the minibus to finish the journey on foot, lasting several days. He groans, hesitates to turn back. Benevolent, a village guide welcomes him in traditional dress, while he, hunched over his laptop, searches in vain for the network. The scene is striking. Opposition between two worlds, one connected to the sky by 4G and the other to the earth studded with yak dung – which, dried, is a marvelous fuel. Pawo Choyning Dorji’s film is an ode to nature, to the beauty of immemorial gestures. Attached to his students, Ugyen leaves the village before winter, unable to escape the memory of these villagers from another time.
The School at the End of the World, by Pawo Choyning Dorji. Indoors.
