Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism.
The Prix des Deux Magots is a major French literary prize. It is presented to new works, and is generally awarded to works that are more off-beat and less conventional than those that receive the more mainstream Prix Goncourt.
Jean Grave was an important activist in the French anarchist and the international anarchist communism movements. He was the editor of three major anarchist periodicals, Le Révolté, La Révolte and Les Temps Nouveaux, and wrote dozens of pamphlets and a number of important anarchist books.
Dorothea Margaret Tanning was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. Her early work was influenced by Surrealism.
The Prix Jean Vigo is an award in the French cinema given annually since 1951 to a French film director, in homage to Jean Vigo. Since 1960, the award has been given to both a director of a feature film and to a director of a short film. The award is usually given to a young director, for their independent spirit and stylistic originality.
Alain Bashung was a French singer, songwriter and actor. Credited with reviving the French chanson in "a time of French musical turmoil", he is often regarded as the most important French rock musician after Serge Gainsbourg. He rose to prominence in the early 1980s with hit songs such as "Gaby oh Gaby" and "Vertige de l'amour", and later had a string of hit records from the 1990s onward, such as "Osez Joséphine", "Ma petite entreprise" and "La nuit je mens". He has had an influence on many later French artists, and is the most awarded artist in the Victoires de la Musique history with 12 victories obtained throughout his career.
Georges Corraface is a French actor of Greek descent, born on December 7, 1952, in Paris, France. He performed in film and television, following many years in French theatre, notably as a member of the International Center for Theatre Research under the direction of Peter Brook in the Peter Brook Company. His notable film credits include To Tama, Escape from L.A., La Pasión Turca, Vive La Mariée, Impromptu, Christopher Columbus, A Touch of Spice, and a feature film debut in The Mahabharata. His most popular television appearances include La Bicyclette Bleue, L'Été Rouge in France, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles in the USA and Drifting Cities in Greece.
Victoires de la Musique are an annual French award ceremony where the Victoire accolade is delivered by the French Ministry of Culture to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry. The classical and jazz versions are the Victoires de la musique classique and Victoires du Jazz.
Princess María de las Mercedes of Bourbon-Two Sicilies was a member of the Spanish royal family and the mother of King Juan Carlos I.
Maurice Ronet was a French film actor, director, and writer.
Colette Peignot was a French writer and poet. She is most known by the pseudonym Laure, but also wrote under the self-chosen name Claude Araxe, derived from a phase in Virgil's Aeneid.
20th-century French philosophy is a strand of contemporary philosophy generally associated with post-World War II French thinkers, although it is directly influenced by previous philosophical movements.
The Cité Catholique is a Traditionalist Catholic organisation created in 1946 by Jean Ousset, originally a follower of Charles Maurras and Jean Masson (1910–1965), not to be confused with Jacques Desoubrie, who also used the pseudonym Jean Masson. Despite the presence of Roman Catholic clergy in some of its meetings, the Cité catholique is not officially recognised by the Roman Catholic Church.
The far-right tradition in France finds its origins in the Third Republic with Boulangism and the Dreyfus affair. In the 1880s, General Georges Boulanger, called "General Revenge", championed demands for military revenge against Imperial Germany as retribution for the defeat and fall of the Second French Empire during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). This stance, known as revanchism, began to exert a strong influence on French nationalism. Soon thereafter, the Dreyfus affair provided one of the political division lines of France. French nationalism, which had been largely associated with left-wing and Republican ideologies before the Dreyfus affair, turned after that into a main trait of the right-wing and, moreover, of the far right. A new right emerged, and nationalism was reappropriated by the far-right who turned it into a form of ethnic nationalism, blended with anti-Semitism, xenophobia, anti-Protestantism and anti-Masonry. The Action française (AF), first founded as a journal and later a political organization, was the matrix of a new type of counter-revolutionary right-wing, which continues to exist today. During the interwar period, the Action française and its youth militia, the Camelots du Roi, were very active. Far right leagues organized riots.
Maîtresse Françoise is a publicly known dominatrix in Paris, France. Her autobiography was published in France by publisher Éditions Gallimard.
The Théâtre de Paris is a theatre located at 15, rue Blanche in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. It includes a second smaller venue, the Petit Théâtre de Paris.
Ivan Stanev was an author, theatre and film director, scenographer and new media artist, who has been living in Berlin since 1988, and more recently in Paris.
Vincent Boussard is a French opera and theatre director. First a specialist for early opera, he became known for his versions of romantic operas, sometimes in international collaboration. His staging of Massenet's Manon was presented at the Vilnius National Opera, the San Francisco Opera and the Korea National Opera. His production of Bellini's I puritani was shown at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie and the Oper Frankfurt.
Don Quichotte was a weekly Communist publication which existed between 1939 and 1940 in Cairo, Egypt. The title, which was given by Henri Curiel, a cofounder, was a reference to Gabriel Alomar, a Catalan poet and writer.
The countesses of the Gestapo were elite adventuresses of the Paris demimonde protected by the French Gestapo and large-scale black marketeers during the German occupation of France. The Gestapo countesses led extravagant lives despite the misery prevalent in Vichy France at the time. They were French or foreign former actresses or runway models, sometimes in fact truly aristocratic, who engaged in a variety of lucrative practices such as the confiscation of Jewish assets, espionage or black market operations.
