This Week In New York

IN THE WORDS OF DURAS

Marguerite Duras, Hall des Roches Noires, Trouville, 1982 (copyright Hélène Bamberger)

Cultural Services of the French Embassy, 972 Fifth Ave.
French Institute Alliance Français, 22 East 60th St.
Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th St.
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave.
February 18 – March 18, free - $35
www.fiaf.org
www.frenchculture.org
www.bacnyc.org
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Born Marguerite Donnadieu in Indochina in 1914, French writer Marguerite Duras had a long career as a journalist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and director. A graduate of the Sorbonne who was raised in extreme poverty, she served in the French Resistance, was expelled from the Communist Party, suffered from alcoholism and hallucinations late in life, and spent her last years with writer Yann Andréa Steiner, who was nearly forty years her junior, before dying of throat cancer in Paris in 1996. Duras’s extraordinary life and work will be celebrated with a month of special events at locations around the city, from documentaries to discussions, avant-garde dance and theater to readings and an intimate photo exhibit. On February 18, the French Institute Alliance Français will host “Meet the Writer…en français,” a discussion with Duras biographer Jean Vallier ($15), followed by “Talk with Jean Vallier: Bringing Duras’s Word to the Stage” in English ($15). On February 26-27, ASTRID BAS DIPTYCH: THE LOVER AND LA MUSICA DEUXIÈME consists of stage productions, with music, of two seminal works by Duras ($35). And on March 6-7, Nicole Ansari, Winsome Brown, Joan Juliet Buck, and Sadie Jemmett star in Irina Brook’s play inspired by Duras’s LA VIE MATÉRIELLE and Virginia Woolf’s A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN ($35).

Astrid Bas presents a Duras diptych at FIAF as part of citywide celebration

The Baryshnikov Arts Center will be presenting the U.S. premiere of L’HOMME ASSIS DANS LE COULOIR (THE MAN SITTING IN THE CORRIDOR), a dance created by Razerka Ben Sadia-Lavant based on the 1980 novella by Duras, performed by Sarah Crépin and Alexandre Dutronc (February 19-21, $20). From 1980 to 1994, photojournalist Hélène Bamberger and Duras spent summers together in Trouville; Bamberger’s photos of the author, collected as “Marguerite Duras par Hélène Bamberger,” will be on view February 18 – March 18 at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. The exhibit opens on February 17 with bilingual readings by Kathleen Chalfant and William Nadylam (free but RSVP required at 212-439-1485, duras@frenchculture.org). On March 2, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy will be screening THE LOVER: FANSTASY OF A MOVIE, a documentary with Claude Berri and others about the film adaptation of THE LOVER, along with a discussion with French professor Sophie Bogaert (free, rsvp@frenchculture.org). One of Duras’s most well known works, HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, will be presented onstage at BAC March 4-6, directed by Christine Letailleur and featuring Valérie Lang, Hiroshi Ota, and Pier Lamandé ($25). Duras was also a unique and experimental filmmaker; her directorial works will be shown in the series “Marguerite Duras on Film” at Anthology Film Archives March 12-18, including screenings of DESTROY, SHE SAID (DÉTRUIRE DIT-ELLE) (1969), NATHALIE GRANCER (1972), LE NAVIRE NIGHT (1979), INDIA SONG (1975), and THE TRUCK (LE CAMION (1977), which stars Duras with Gérard Depardieu. “The best way to fill time is to waste it,” Duras once famously said. You could do a lot worse than wasting plenty of time at this wide-ranging, exciting festival honoring one of the most intriguing literary figures of the twentieth century.