André Robert Breton was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".
Françoise d'Eaubonne was a French author, labour rights activist, environmentalist, and feminist. Her 1974 book, Le Féminisme ou la Mort, introduced the term ecofeminism. She co-founded the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire, a homosexual revolutionary alliance in Paris.
Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist, and poet. He was born in Melilla and settled in France in 1955. Regarding his nationality, Arrabal describes himself as "desterrado", or "half-expatriate, half-exiled".
Ferdinand Cheval, often nicknamed Facteur Cheval was a French mail carrier who spent 33 years building Le Palais idéal in Hauterives, in southeastern France. It is regarded as an extraordinary example of naïve art architecture.
Éric Losfeld was a Belgian-born French publisher who had a reputation for publishing controversial material with his publishing imprint Éditions Le Terrain Vague.
Christian Henri Marquand was a French actor.
Charles Eugène, vicomte de Foucauld de Pontbriand,, commonly known as Charles de Foucauld, was a French soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnographer, Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg people in the Sahara in Algeria. He was assassinated in 1916. His inspiration and writings led to the founding of a number of religious communities inspired by his example, such as the Little Brothers of Jesus.
Alexis Lapointe, known as Alexis le Trotteur was a Quebec athlete in the early 20th century who has become a legendary character of québécois folklore.
Marie-France Garcia, known professionally as Marie France is a French singer and actress. She is a transgender Parisian pop icon of the 1970s.
Jean Painlevé was a French photographer and filmmaker who specialized in underwater fauna. He was the son of mathematician and twice prime minister of France Paul Painlevé.
Emmanuelle Riva was a French actress, best known for her roles in the films Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Amour (2012).
Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production, with origins in Paris in the 1920s. The Surrealist movement used shocking, irrational, or absurd imagery and Freudian dream symbolism to challenge the traditional function of art to represent reality. Related to Dada cinema, Surrealist cinema is characterized by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery. Philippe Soupault and André Breton’s 1920 book collaboration Les Champs magnétiques is often considered to be the first Surrealist work, but it was only once Breton had completed his Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 that ‘Surrealism drafted itself an official birth certificate.’
Pêr-Jakez Helias, baptised Pierre-Jacques Hélias, nom de plumePierre-Jakez Hélias (1914–1995) was a Breton stage actor, journalist, author, poet, and writer for radio who worked in the French and Breton languages. For many years he directed a weekly radio programme in the Breton language and co-founded an Eisteddfod-inspired summer festival at Quimper which became the Festival de Cornouaille.
Michel Creton is a French actor.
Fierrot le pou is a 1990 French 8-minute short film directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, his debut film. He also plays the lead role in the film as the basketball player.
Autumn in Peking is a 1947 novel by the French writer Boris Vian. It was published by Jean d’Halluin's Éditions du Scorpion in 1947 with a second edition at Éditions de Minuit in 1956 which had a drawing by Mose on the cover. It was reissued in 1963 and reprinted a number of times. The French critic Bruno Maillé has described it as a surrealist novel, something the surrealists themselves refuted. However, Alistair Rolls in his study of intertextuality in four novels of Boris Vian argues the novel contains many surrealist elements and techniques. The Peking of the title is not literal; if anywhere the location of the novel's main action is a “dream-desert” allowing Vian to play with visual extremes of searing light and heat as well as intense blackness and night. It takes place in an imaginary desert called Exopotamie where a train station and a railway line are under construction. Pestereaux argued that Peking was simply slang for Paris; an allegory of Paris post WW2 reconstruction and the insanity of its bureaucracy.
The Henson horse, or cheval de Henson, is a modern horse breed from northeast France. It was created by the selective breeding of light saddle horses with the smaller, heavier Norwegian Fjord horse to create small horses suitable for the equestrian vacation industry. The breeders' association, Association du Cheval Henson, was formed in 1983. In 1995 the studbook was closed to horses not born from Henson parents, and in 2003 the breed was officially recognised by the French government agencies for horse breeding. A hardy breed of horse, each winter the broodmares and youngstock from several breeders are let loose together to graze freely in the wetland reserves in France.
The Bidet was a type of small horse from France, now extinct. It was a landrace developed principally in the area around Brittany, Morvan, Auvergne, Poitou, and Burgundy. It stood about 110–135 centimetres at the withers. Two distinct groups are documented, which were bred in a semi-feral state.
L’Amour fou is the 27th studio album of French popular singer Françoise Hardy. Released in France on November 5, 2012, on CD Virgin/EMI (5099997278726), and December 3, 2012, on LP Virgin/EMI (5099997278719).
