Latest news with #French-language
Ottawa Citizen
33 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Ottawa Citizen
Dunlevy: What's Montreal's best summer music festival?
In the city of festivals, where there is a fest for seemingly every occasion and each day of the year, what is Montreal's best summer music festival? Which one represents our city in the best light, gives the most thrills, the biggest bang for your buck? Article content That last question is often redundant in a city where you can do a whole lotta festing for free. Which brings us to our first contender, the heavyweight champion, which built its name, reputation and world-famous appeal on its free shows: the Montreal International Jazz Festival, where you can walk the site on any given night and take in a globe-trotting array of music without spending a dime, or, if you're feeling festive, for the price of a beer and a mango on a stick. Fresh off its 45th edition, the jazz fest is hard to beat for the variety of music, the people-watching and its imprint on our city. Article content Article content Prior to the jazz fest is, of course, the French-language music fête Les Francos de Montréal, and the avant-garde offerings of Suoni Per Il Popolo, put on by the good folks at Casa del Popolo and La Sala Rossa. Article content Article content Hot on the heels of the jazz festival is the not-so-hidden gem Nuits d'Afrique. The annual celebration of African and Latin American sounds recently marked 39 years of body-moving rhythms. Nuits d'Afrique has grown in stature since it began setting up shop in the Quartier des spectacles, in part of the same state-of-the-art site as the jazz fest, which makes Montreal the envy of cities everywhere. Article content Article content The Gazette team is still coming down from the epic 18th edition of Osheaga, which attracted 142,000 young music fans over three days to see headliners The Killers, Tyler, the Creator and Olivia Rodrigo, plus some 85 other acts — including show-stealing Tampa rapper Doechii — at Parc Jean-Drapeau. Osheaga director Nick Farkas can't say enough about the festival site on Île Ste-Hélène, just a short métro ride from downtown. He calls it the best festival setting in North America — better than Coachella and Bonnaroo, to name just two. Article content Article content Osheaga promoter Evenko makes the most of the location. It just hosted the 10th edition of DJ and dance-music marathon ÎleSoniq there; and this coming weekend, it's boots and saddles time as the country-music hoedown Lasso ropes in headliners Bailey Zimmerman and Jelly Roll, as well as Friday favourites Shaboozey (who also played Osheaga) and Sheryl Crow. Yeehaw! Article content Article content There's a festival for everyone in Montreal. It's like a riff on the old Oprah car giveaway joke — you get a festival, and you get a festival … Article content And while I love them all, next week marks the start of one of my under-the-radar faves. Mutek, Montreal's festival of electronic music and digital art, is as hip, cool and cultured as anything our city has to offer. The cutting-edge event has received a boost from presenting free outdoor DJ sets around the Quartier des spectacles in recent years. But the buzz has reached another level since it settled its outdoor activities at the Esplanade Tranquille.
Montreal Gazette
3 days ago
- Business
- Montreal Gazette
EMSB joins legal challenge to stop Quebec's school budget cuts
The English Montreal School Board will ask a judge to put a pause on the province's latest round of budget cuts. In a special meeting of the council of commissioners on Monday, the board voted unanimously to join the legal challenge mounted by the Quebec English School Boards Association (QESBA). That challenge will probably be filed in court next week, and would ask a judge for a stay of implementing the 2025-2026 budgetary rules imposed on school boards and school service centres. Announced in June, the province's education ministry imposed $570 million in cuts on schools throughout the province. EMSB chairperson Joe Ortona said that even though the government appeared to correct its course by announcing a new budgetary envelope of $540 million, that is merely a distraction. The new money comes with far too many strings attached, Ortona says, arguing it is impossible for his board to get access to most of that funding. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Ortona explained the cuts amount to roughly $20 million in the board's $450 million annual budget. Part of the reason the cuts are so dramatic is that they bar schools from using any surplus accumulated from previous years to affect this year's budget. 'It is impossible to balance the budget with these cuts that the government is imposing,' Ortona said. He added that if the board were to enact all the imposed cuts, some extracurricular programs would be cancelled, breakfast programs would be scaled back, and children with special needs would get fewer services. 'Parents are worried,' Ortona said. 'Because they don't know where the cuts will be coming from or what will be affected.' Ortona said the board is reaching out to other English-language boards. Since French-language boards have been abolished, he is urging lobby groups like Uni-es pour l'École and others to support the cause. Nearly 160,000 Quebecers have already signed a National Assembly petition opposing the cuts. 'There is strength in numbers,' Ortona said. 'We're actually fighting for all of the students in both the English and French public system, because they're both suffering from these harmful cuts.' He's called on the province to rescind the June cuts altogether, and said the school board intends to argue that the cuts amount to meddling with the English-speaking community's right to control its educational institutions, a constitutional right that was upheld by a court earlier this year. 'The legal argument is that we have a Court of Appeal decision that says that the government can't micromanage how we spend the money,' Ortona said. 'So they have to stop telling us that they're giving us money to be spent only on certain specific projects. ... They're acting illegally, they're acting unconstitutionally, and it's why we're hopeful that the courts will grant the stay, and ultimately the broader legal challenge.' He added that the board has reached out numerous times over the last few weeks to Education Minister Bernard Drainville, but has yet to receive a response. On Monday, The Gazette's calls to Drainville's office were not returned as of the time of publication. This story was originally published August 11, 2025 at 4:28 PM.
Time Business News
3 days ago
- Time Business News
IPTV France Premium: The Complete Guide to Elite French Streaming Services
The world of television is undergoing a massive transformation, shifting from traditional broadcast and cable TV to flexible, internet-based platforms. For viewers in France and French-speaking audiences around the globe, one name has been gaining significant attention—IPTV France Premium. This service promises to deliver high-quality, stable, and feature-rich television experiences tailored specifically for those who want premium French and international content, all from the comfort of their devices. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore exactly what IPTV France Premium offers, how it works, its features, benefits, setup requirements, legal aspects, and why it's becoming the go-to choice for those seeking a sophisticated IPTV experience. IPTV France Premium is a premium-grade Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service that delivers live TV, on-demand movies, TV series, sports, and exclusive French-language channels over the internet. Instead of relying on cable or satellite infrastructure, this service streams content directly to your smart TV, mobile device, computer, or IPTV box. This means: Global Accessibility – Watch French TV anywhere with an internet connection. – Watch French TV anywhere with an internet connection. Massive Content Library – Includes thousands of channels and on-demand options. – Includes thousands of channels and on-demand options. Flexible Viewing Options – Pause, rewind, fast-forward, and catch up on missed shows. Like other IPTV services, IPTV France Premium operates on a subscription model. The process is straightforward: Choose Your Plan – Select a subscription length that suits your needs (monthly, quarterly, yearly). Receive Login Credentials – You'll get a username, password, and M3U or portal URL. Install an IPTV Player – Use a compatible app like IPTV Smarters, TiviMate, or GSE Smart IPTV. Enter Your Subscription Details – Load your channel list and VOD library. Start Streaming – Enjoy live French TV, sports, and premium entertainment instantly. With IPTV France Premium, you gain access to thousands of channels, including: French national and regional networks International news and entertainment Exclusive sports packages Premium movie channels The service supports HD and 4K streams for a cinematic viewing experience, provided you have a stable internet connection. Browse through hundreds of movies and TV series available at any time, eliminating the need for separate streaming subscriptions. Missed your favorite show? IPTV France Premium lets you watch previously aired programs for up to several days after broadcast. Compatible with Smart TVs, Android TV boxes, Fire Stick, iOS/Android devices, and PCs. A user-friendly interface displaying schedules for all available channels. While offering global content, the service focuses heavily on French-language programming, making it ideal for expatriates and francophiles. It offers more content at a fraction of the cost of traditional cable or satellite services. Your subscription can be used anywhere in the world, as long as you have internet access. Many IPTV apps allow you to customize your channel list, organize favorites, and adjust settings for a personalized experience. Install an IPTV app directly on your TV to stream without additional hardware. Use a Fire Stick, Apple TV, or Android TV box for a seamless experience. Download the IPTV app for iOS or Android to watch on the go. Many IPTV players are available for Windows and macOS. Feature IPTV France Premium Traditional TV Channel Variety Thousands, including international Limited to local packages Video Quality HD & 4K Mostly HD, few 4K options Flexibility Multi-device, watch anywhere Limited to TV location VOD Access Included Often extra cost Price Affordable Expensive monthly fees For smooth streaming: HD – At least 10 Mbps – At least 10 Mbps 4K – At least 25 MbpsA wired Ethernet connection is recommended for the most stable experience. While IPTV technology is completely legal, the legality of specific providers depends on whether they have broadcasting rights for the content they distribute. Always ensure you're using a licensed provider to avoid legal risks. Close background apps using your internet. Switch to a wired connection. Double-check your username and password. Contact customer support if the problem persists. Refresh your playlist or restart your IPTV app. With the rapid growth of internet speeds and smart devices, IPTV services like IPTV France Premium are set to dominate the TV landscape. Expect: 8K streaming capabilities in the coming years. in the coming years. AI-powered recommendations for personalized viewing. for personalized viewing. Greater interactivity such as live polls and multiple camera angles. Organize Favorites – Keep your most-watched channels easily accessible. Update Your Apps – Ensure optimal performance. Explore Global Content – Don't limit yourself to just French programming. Use a VPN When Traveling – Access content without geographic restrictions. For French-speaking audiences seeking a premium, versatile, and cost-effective TV solution, IPTV France Premium stands out as a top-tier option. Its combination of vast content, high-quality streams, device flexibility, and user-friendly features makes it a compelling choice for anyone looking to enhance their viewing experience. Whether you're in France or living abroad, IPTV France Premium offers the perfect blend of home comforts and global entertainment—redefining what it means to watch TV in the modern age. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
The South African
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The South African
Doja Cat announces completion of new album 'Vie'
Doja Cat has officially completed her highly anticipated fifth studio album, Vie . The singer announced the milestone with a brief French-language post on X (formerly Twitter). She simply wrote, 'L'album est complet,' meaning 'The album is complete,' and added a croissant emoji. This was a playful nod to the album's French title, which translates to 'life' in English. Scheduled for release this autumn, Vie marks Doja Cat's return to a more pop-driven sound following her 2023 album Scarlet , according to Billboard. Scarlet debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200 and featured the chart-topping single 'Paint the Town Red.' In a recent interview with V Magazine, Doja Cat described the new album as distinctly focused on pop music. She said, 'I want to be self-aware enough to admit the fact that this is a pop-driven project.' She added insight into the cultural perception of pop. 'Pop is just that, it's popular. It starts to become a bit of a thing that's viewed as a sport by people who are just bystanders to it, who enjoy it. Maybe they also don't respect it or what it is, which is just music'. Doja Cat also revealed that Vie explores themes around love, romance, and sex with a hopeful and future-oriented perspective. She shared, 'This album is very much about love in a way that reflects how I want it to be in the future, my hope, my hopefulness. What I hope it could be.' She contrasted this with the current trend in pop music, which often centres on breakup songs and cynicism about relationships. Although no official singles from Vie have been released yet, Doja Cat has teased snippets of unreleased tracks on social media. She recently collaborated with RAYE and LISA on the single Born Again and featured on Jack Harlow's Just Us and Don Toliver's Lose My Mind from the F1 soundtrack. This has kept her presence strong in the music scene. Doja Cat will drop her upcoming single, 'Jealous Type,' on 21 August, further building anticipation for the album's full release. The anticipation for Vie is high as Doja Cat prepares to deliver an album combining infectious pop energy with emotional depth. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1. Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
Al-Ahram Weekly
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Fanon on film - Culture - Al-Ahram Weekly
Perhaps rather in the way of passengers on London buses, which have a reputation for keeping people waiting beyond scheduled arrival times and then showing up in groups of two, French audiences now have the opportunity to see not one but two films about the life and times of the Martinican psychiatrist and Algerian independence activist Frantz Fanon. Both films are biopics, and both focus on the years that Fanon spent at Blida, a town some 45 km southwest of Algiers, after his appointment to the Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in 1953. He resigned in 1956 to devote himself to the struggle for Algerian independence from France. The first film, called Fanon and directed by French director Jean-Claude Barny, takes in Fanon's arrival in Blida in 1953, his attempted reorganisation of the medical services provided at the Hospital, and his eventual resignation in 1956 before joining the Front de Libération nationale (FLN), the Algerian independence movement. It ends with Fanon working for the FLN in neighbouring Tunisia as a writer on the movement's French-language newspaper El Moudjahid and with the diagnosis of the leukemia that led to his early death at the age of only 36 in 1961. The second film, released in cinemas just weeks after the first and called Frantz Fanon, is directed by Algerian director Abdenour Zahzah. It also focuses on the years that Fanon spent in Blida before leaving to devote himself to the struggle for Algerian independence. However, whereas Barny's film, working with what seems to have been a larger budget, invites audiences to place Fanon's growing political radicalisation at the centre of their sense of him, Zahzah focuses instead on Fanon's work as a psychiatrist. His film, made in black and white and without the overblown soundtrack that is such a feature of Barny's film, presents Fanon as a medical professional, though one working in and rebelling against the colonial context. His Fanon rarely if ever leaves his place of work – quite a contrast to Barny's who is shown driving around the countryside, attending FLN meetings, confronting the French army, and finally moving to Tunis. Both films plunge audiences back into the political debates in France in the 1950s, when the future of its then remaining colonies, at first up in the air, was effectively decided by the decision to withdraw from what was then French Indochina, now Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, following defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese independence movement the Viet Minh in 1954. Morocco and Tunisia, then French protectorates, became independent in 1956 without notable violence, but the case was different in Algeria, a French colony rather than a protectorate, a history of colonialism going back to 1830, and a European population of some 1.6 million. Algeria only became independent in 1962 following a long and bloody independence war that witnessed atrocities on both sides. Lasting scars were inflicted at enormous cost in terms of material losses and human lives. French intellectual life also became focused on the country's relationship with its soon to be former colonies. Writers such as Albert Camus, himself Algerian born, Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Aron, Andre Malraux, Albert Memmi, of Tunisian origin, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many others all took up positions on the Algerian war. This heady set of circumstances was added to by writings on colonialism and the search for independence by writers such as Aimé Césaire in the Caribbean – his book Cahier d'un retour au pays natal is about the colonised condition of his native land, which, like Fanon's, was Martinique – and the Sub-Saharan African and African diaspora figures gathered around the review Présence africaine, including first president of independent Senegal Leopold Sedar Senghor. Fanon intervened in these political and intellectual debates with his own philosophically and psychologically inflected writings on colonialism, post-colonialism, and cultural and racial difference. He began to publish these in 1952 even before his posting in Algeria, with the best-known being Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks), a meditation on racism owing much to the existentialist philosophy of Sartre that was then fashionable in France. This book is presented in Zahzah's film as having first drawn the attention of the FLN to this unorthodox, but still obscure, young psychiatrist who had joined the Blida Hospital at the beginning of what was supposed to be a medical career. There is also a moment in Barny's film when a copy of the book is discovered on Fanon's shelves. He points to the others and says that they are the works of Sartre. Peau noire, masques blancs began a vein of examining race-based subjugation and the search for freedom that was later carried forward in different form in books such as Les Damnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth) and L'An V de la Révolution algérienne (A Dying Colonialism) on the impact of colonialism in Algeria and prospects for post-colonial government. Fanon saw the promise of independence in Algeria as part and parcel of the freedom from the fatal dialectics of black and white identified in the earlier book and played out in another form in the poisonous relation of coloniser and colonised in France's North African colonies. Fanon and Frantz Fanon: Barny's film is the longer and more wide-ranging of the two and presents a Fanon who, at first at sea in Algeria, gradually comes to understand that it is impossible to practice psychiatry, at least his kind of psychiatry, under colonial conditions. Arriving at the Blida Hospital, Fanon is shown entering a house of horrors where patients are chained up in cellars and treated less as human beings and more as the bearers of conditions not amenable to effective therapy. Fresh from his psychiatric studies in France and convinced of the value of new techniques that seem closer to modern standards of psychotherapeutic treatment, Fanon releases the patients, introduces what might now be called occupational therapy, chiefly football matches and art classes, and encourages the patients to express themselves and become more involved in their care. All this is presented as revolutionary in the film, and perhaps it was in the context of colonial Algeria, except that while Fanon had spent some time at the St Alban Psychiatric Hospital in the south of France where he had been introduced to the psychotherapeutic methods associated with one of its leading figures, the iconoclastic psychiatrist Francois Tosquelles, it is known that he could also be quite orthodox in his medical views. Trained as a medical doctor rather than as a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, or psychoanalyst, he is known to have relied upon the usual panoply of medical treatments for long-term patients recommended at the time, including various drug therapies, electroconvulsive therapy, and insulin comas, which are frowned upon today. However, Barny's interest is less in the details of Fanon's psychiatric methods at Blida and more on his growing political awareness and sense that practicing psychiatry under colonial conditions was likely to lead to intolerable conflicts. Patients are shown being arrested at the Hospital during police raids on suspicion of membership of the FLN, and Fanon himself is shown attending FLN recruitment sessions in the surrounding countryside. His position as a senior member of the medical profession becomes untenable, leading him to abandon his career. Zahzah's film, this time called Frantz Fanon, also focuses on Fanon's Blida years and begins with the arrival of this young doctor – he was just 28 years old – in a hospital that, looking to France for its senior staff, drew on the so-called Algiers School of Psychiatry for its medical bearings. This had pioneered a diagnosis handed down to the Hospital's native Algerian, as opposed to European, patients, who could be identified as suffering from a mixture of lassitude and outbreaks of violence thought at the time to be related to less developed impulse and motor control. Arriving in the Blida Hospital following a period spent trying to introduce more humane methods of psychiatric treatment during his medical training in France, Fanon began to look for ways to break traditionally hierarchical doctor-patient relationships. Zahzah's film does not present the Blida Hospital as being the house of horrors imagined by Barny, and it is probably more accurate about what went on there. Fanon is at first assigned to treat the Hospital's European patients, where his methods achieve some degree of success, and only later is he assigned to treat the Algerians. Zahzah's film, more modest than Barny's, is the more thought-provoking of the two. Both films draw upon cases reported by Fanon in Les Damnés de la Terre, where in the chapter on 'Colonial War and Mental Disorders' he suggests that the psychological disorders of his Algerian and European patients were related to the colonial context in which they lived. He questioned the diagnoses of the Algiers School, suggesting that the symptoms exhibited by his Algerian patients were best understood as a response to the colonial situation in Algeria rather than, as the School had suggested, a form of 'reactive paleophrenia' associated with the influence of the 'reptilian brain' or so-called 'North African Syndrome.' In the films, two cases, one of a French police officer who beats his wife and children and one of two Algerian boys, 13 and 14 years old, who kill a French playmate, are woven into the narrative. These are described as 'reactive disorders' in Les Damnés de la Terre, and in Zahzah's film they are used illuminatingly to suggest the ways in which Fanon's work at Blida, and his growing sense of psychiatry in a colonial context, were related to his earlier work, inspired by Sartre, on the psychopathologies of racism in metropolitan France. One thing that neither film can do is answer all the questions audiences might have about what went on in Blida and its relationship to the essays on Fanon's psychiatric practice and analysis of colonialism. This is true of the essay on 'Medicine and Colonialism,' for example, mostly about the relationship between Algerian patients and French medical professionals, as well as those 'On Violence' and 'Colonial War and Mental Disorders.' Many readers over the years will have read these essays and wished that Fanon had had more time to develop his ideas and that the essays themselves, sometimes just hypotheses thrown out in the hurry to the press, had contained pointers to the way he carried out his medical consultations and the relation of the cases to his clinical notes, presumably long since destroyed. Ecrits sur l'aliénation et la liberté, published in 2018, a collection of previously uncollected pieces by Fanon that includes his psychiatric writings, is an essential resource, especially the introductory material by editor Jean Khalfa. French audiences might also be advised to see Zahzah's film, which sends one back to Fanon with a new appetite. * A version of this article appears in print in the 7 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
