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Euronews
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Covid-19 Culture: What we'd like to bring back from the pandemic
March 2020. More and more governments ask their citizens to confine themselves to their homes as COVID-19 outbreak spread. Less than a month later, about half of the world's population was under some form of lockdown, with more than 3.9 billion people in over 90 countries urged or, ordered to stay at home. Five years on, the Euronews Culture team has been wondering: Is there anything we miss about lockdown, and what would we bring back? By Sarah Miansoni When lockdown, or 'confinement' as it was known in France started on 17 March 2020, I decided to stay in my 18m2 flat in the suburbs of Paris, where I lived alone. It was a stupid idea. In the first weeks of quarantine, I tried everything to kill boredom, including learning a choreography for a Dua Lipa song on YouTube – which is tricky when you can't extend your leg without touching a wall. I also remember thinking about the culture I had not experienced in my first semester as a student in the French capital. All the things that I had put off because they were too expensive, or I didn't have time, or I didn't especially feel like doing - lockdown gave me a chance to catch up. Productions shut down, festivals were cancelled, and artists were left wondering when they would perform again. So, instead of waiting for things to go back to normal, many creatives and cultural institutions chose to put their work online, free of charge, for everyone to see. The Royal Opera House in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Paris Opera all broadcast recordings of their shows. In April 2020, more than 725,000 people tuned in to watch the Met's At-Home Gala, which featured more than 40 of its opera singers, all performing from home. Top-tier museums including the Paris Louvre and the British Museum offered virtual tours of their collections. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which was in the process of expanding its online resources when Covid-19 hit, experienced an explosion in traffic on its website and social media channels. For movie-lovers who lamented missing the Cannes Film Festival, the French art house movie chain mk2 launched its 'Festival at home', each week releasing a carefully curated selection of films for free online. There was also theatre. I remember watching a strange play featuring a naked woman talking to a white horse, simply because it was made available. Would I have booked a ticket to see this show live? Probably not, but that's what made the experience so alluring. COVID-19 forced me to question the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to appreciate art. I subscribe to the opinion that there is nothing like hearing live music or seeing a play in a packed theatre. I am also someone who discovered John Singer Sargent's paintings on Instagram and developed my knowledge of cinema and became a film-lover through streaming platforms. I did not get to enjoy all the art that lockdown had to offer, of course. After all, I still had classes to attend, essays to write - not to mention the daily hour of laying in my bed staring at the ceiling. But this moment showed that it was possible for even the most established (some would say rigid) institutions to adapt and to reach new audiences. More of that again please. By Theo Farrant Covid lockdown was a bizarre, yet oddly magical, era. It was a time when babies were being baptised by priests with water guns, everyone and their nan was binge watching Tiger King, popping down to your local Tesco for an hour-long queue felt like a night out on the town, and Jackie Weaver had absolutely no authority. While it was an incredibly tough period for many, I have to admit - I thrived. The pandemic may have completely derailed a big chunk of my university experience - a time meant for meeting new people and making questionable life choices - but for someone who has always prospered as a bit of a house goblin, it was, in many ways, a dream come true. The minimal responsibilities, unlimited time with my two cats and being actively encouraged to stay indoors. I was basically considered a national hero by the government for doing what I do best - absolutely nothing. If there's one thing that truly defined that funny old time for me, it was lockdown gaming. More specifically, Call of Duty: Warzone. The game had just dropped, completely free to play for all, and it was phenomenal. It was Activision's attempt to cash in on the battle royale trend - popularised by PUBG and Fortnite - and it turned out to be a masterpiece. For non-gamers reading, battle royale games are essentially like The Hunger Games: you're dropped into a map with a hundred or so other players, you have to scavenge for weapons, and fight to be the last one standing. Warzone took this formula and cranked it up to the next level - with an incredible open map, thrilling multiplayer gameplay, and the perfect balance of chaos and strategy. Within a month of the game's release, it had 50 million players. Despite not being a massive gamer myself, I became hooked. I grew up on Call of Duty classics like Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops, but my interest gradually faded as life got busier. Yet, with nowhere to go and an urgent need for some form of a social life outside of my family bubble, my friends and I found ourselves logging in most nights to laugh, shout, and embrace the sheer mayhem of Warzone. It was something to look forward to each day. Anyone who played it during that time will understand me. The desperate struggle to get your first win. The pure euphoria when you finally did. It might sound trivial, but it was somewhat of a lifeline - a way to stay connected with my friends and a much-needed form of escapism that kept me sane while the world outside felt like it was falling apart. Now that life is back to normal, we don't game together as much anymore - if at all. Jobs, responsibilities, and reality have taken over. What I would do for one more late night of lockdown Warzone… By David Mouriquand It's hard for me to be completely nostalgic about Covid lockdown and the world coming to a screeching halt. Granted, it allowed many to take up new hobbies, to master the technicalities of sourdough bread, and binge watch Twin Peaks for the 100th time. But all that came with the anxiety-inducing feeling of uncertainty, paranoia about toilet paper shortages, and the human cost of a deadly virus that no one fully understood. Five years on, the one thing I do miss the most about the lockdown is a renewed sense of community that quarantine managed to spark, as if common psychological distress awakened a heightened sense of fraternity. Even in the smallest of ways. I was living in Berlin for the lockdown and like many around Europe, people were organising makeshift performances on their balconies. There was a trumpet player on a balcony near my flat that regaled the neighbourhood with his compositions and temporarily soothed the collective mood. Outside of lockdown, people would have complained about the noise. Not during though. I also remember one young girl learning how to play the Amélie Poulain soundtrack. As potentially grating as it could have been to hear the same piano-led Yann Tiersen track every evening, there was something uplifting about hearing her progress day by day. People listened. They paid attention. And they applauded. Then there was the acknowledgement of the importance of essential workers – specifically hospital staff. They were celebrated with applause, the daily banging of pots and pans, and even some window displays. These may have been hollow gestures compared to much-deserved pay-rises, but it was a long-overdue show of respect and gratitude which felt important. Considering both my parents were on the frontline as medical professionals, there was something about this routine that made me happy. More than that, it made me hopeful that Covid could be a turning point, and that this renewed appreciation for the 'everyday heroes' so often taken for granted could be here to stay. Sadly, it wasn't to be, and soon after lockdown lifted, many reverted back to their old ways. No more impromptu concerts fostering a sense of neighbourhood spirit and community. And certainly no more clapping for those who held it all together while the rest of us were inside. Where is the balcony or door clapping for carers now? What happened to the rejuvenated appreciation for those who truly make a difference? Not just hospital staff, but supermarket workers, teachers, food delivery workers... Where are we now when we should be supporting them when they're in the streets asking for better working conditions and fairer wages? The lockdown temporarily roused a sense of solidarity with those who weren't invincible like comic book superheroes but kept on working through their struggles. Clapping should have been the beginning. Instead, it confirmed the frustrating human capacity to forget all-too-quickly. Is it possible to have nostalgia for a pandemic lockdown? Not fully. However, if there's one thing I'd bring back is that briefest of times when public solidarity felt like it was signaling prolonged positive change. And I'd hope we'd make it stick this time. By Jonny Walfisz As a journalist instead of a frontline worker, I had the benefit of moving my whole professional life to the confines of home. As I settled into the increasing months of isolation in a south London flat, the world outside my window hadn't dulled at all. Living on an important tributary road to the capital, trucks and lorries clattered past our windows at all hours of the day bringing the goods we were all relying on. From the viewpoint of my room, London was the same chaotic busy sprawl. A non-stop hubbub of activity driven by the desires of commerce. It was only through the daily hour-long walks we were permitted that I found out how untrue that was. That spring in London was blazing hot and each day, I'd use my lunch time to quickly assemble a sandwich and start exploring the streets around my flat. There was the suburban London that had retreated inside, leaving roads empty and full of promise. In place of the basic arterial routes to convey people from location to location, I discovered an abstract pattern of intrigue. A suburban sprawl of at first identical houses revealed themselves as an endless array of intricately detailed art projects, each an expression of the owners' personalities encased within the confines of 19th century housing developments. I found my favourite tree, a sycamore in a front garden that a family lit up in deep purple lighting at night. There were now my preferred secret alleyways and cut-throughs, missed by the brute force tool Google Maps. Most delightfully, if I had enough time to reach Nunhead cemetery, up the hill I had a bench facing an avenue of trimmed trees that revealed a panorama of London. Becoming an amateur cartographer of my sleepy bit of suburbia was just the beginning. On weekends, I'd cycle out over Tower Bridge and explore the city centre. Standing in the middle of the road at Oxford Circus will remain one of my most surreal experiences, so throbbing is it usually under the soles of endless tourists and heaving bus tyres. Will birdsong ever be so easily heard in Zone 1 again? Maybe not. And while I don't wish for London or any city to return to such a mandated silence again, I will always cherish the opportunity to explore and see my home in a new light. 'Enough is enough!' Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of far-left political party La France Insoumise (LFI), recently lost his temper during an appearance on the TV show Dimanche en politique on France 3, responding with outrage to the following question: "Was the Hanouna poster a mistake or not?" 'Why are you asking me this question?' shouted the former presidential candidate, with all his trademark tact. 'What right do you have? Who are you? Are you accusing me? Are you accusing me? Then shut up!' Further raising his voice, he added: 'You're continuing a campaign against us that started on the far right.' And just like that, journalist Francis Letellier ended the interview. The clip of the interview has gone viral, and La France Insoumise has been forced to withdraw the poster depicting French radio and TV presenter Cyril Hanouna on grounds that it is reminiscent of Nazi anti-Semitic imagery. Check it out for yourself: The poster, showing Hanouna with furrowed eyebrows, a protruding nose, and pulling an aggressive grimace, was intended to drum up support for those wishing to take part in an anti-racism rally on 22 March. It massively backfired, with many being quick to recognise the hateful iconography of anti-Semitic caricatures from the 1930s and Nazi Germany. The image has caused a major political controversy, especially since LFI – like Britain's Labour party – has routinely struggled with accusations of anti-Semitism. For historian Robert Hirsch, author of the book "La Gauche et les Juifs" (published by Le Bord de l'Eau, 2022), 'this is probably the clearest anti-Semitic provocation from La France Insoumise.' Only last Sunday, French outlet Libération reported that one of Mélenchon's former lieutenants expressed surprise that his former mentor had described the extermination of Jews during the Second World War as a 'mass massacre' rather than a 'genocide' - a word Mélenchon frequently uses when referring to Palestine. Instead of addressing the situation head on, Mélenchon has relied on a tactic of systemic denial. In this case, he feigned ignorance of Hanouna's Jewish origin and denounced 'propaganda from far-right networks' instead of taking any form of accountability. However, this poster scandal has led to dissension in the ranks. Certain LFI party members are expressing embarrassment when faced with numerous calls to action following the publication of the visual. 'Indifference towards anti-Semitism is not an option,' wrote Clémentine Autain, MP and former member of lFI. 'When you are on the left and you want to fight the far right, you are beyond reproach in the fight against anti-Semitism.' According to the publication L'Opinion, one party member who wished to remain anonymous stated: 'Either the guy at LFI headquarters who designed the visuals is an uneducated asshole, or he's an anti-Semitic scumbag.' Neither very appealing options. To make matters worse, the Ligue des droits de l'Homme issued a rare statement on Monday condemning the publication of the visual and criticising La France Insoumise. 'Any organisation or political party can make communication errors,' the organisation said in a statement. 'When LFI does not seem to recognise the fact and the nature of these errors, we question its understanding and its willingness to remedy the situation.' The latest development has been placing the blame at AI's doorstep. Indeed, the image was reportedly generated by artificial intelligence via the Grok software developed by the xAI company owned by no one's favourite American billionaire Elon Musk. Fair enough, but if you're designing posters for a march against the rise of the far-right, would you place your trust in the tools of a man whose right arm action has drawn comparisons to the Nazi party, and whose Tesla cars are rarely seen without swastika tags these days? And even if that doesn't raise any red flags, wouldn't it be judicious to... you know... double-check or run it by a few interested parties before sending the image to the printers? It remains to be seen how LFI reacts if Hanouna takes any legal action against the party. What is clear is that the offending poster has fuelled LFI's political opponents, benefitted the far-right party Rassemblement National (National Rally) - who are now portraying themselves as the defenders of the French Jewish community - and above all, completely undermined the original purpose of the campaign: marching against racism and the rise of the far-right. It goes to show that condemning things in direct terms and a clear admission of clumsiness is best policy. Or as Clémentine Autain added in her statement on social media: 'If we fail, through ignorance or misunderstanding, we acknowledge it, and then we do better.'
Euronews
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Fancy a drink? French lawmakers adopt bill to bring back bars in rural areas
By Sarah Miansoni Proponents of the bill argue it is a way to tackle the economic and social decline of rural areas, whilst critics worry about health risks. ADVERTISEMENT If you were to imagine a village in the French countryside in the 1960s, there would probably be a bar – or bistrot in French – somewhere between the boulangerie and the post office. Today, chances are none of these three places would be there. In an attempt to tackle the economic decline of rural areas, the French National Assembly passed a bill on Monday making it easier to open bars in villages of fewer than 3,500 inhabitants that do not have any. Proponents of the bill say it is a way to revitalise these areas, in a country where two thirds of towns no longer have any local shops. The law would give bars in small towns the power to sell hard liquor through a simple declaration of the mayor, loosening existing regulations. It is currently impossible to create brand new hard liquor licences in France. A café can only serve alcoholic beverages stronger than wine and beer if another local bar agrees to let go of its own licence, and the transfer must be authorised by authorities. For Guillaume Kasbarian, the lawmaker behind the law, this legal framework is 'obsolete.' Cafés 'help to maintain and sometimes even restore a sense of community. Every French person should have access to them, wherever they live', he said in the National Assembly. 'Having a drink at a café cannot become an urban privilege.' Kasbarian, who belongs to the centre-right presidential party and was until recently France's Minister of Civil Service, also said bringing back village bars would help boost local economies and create jobs in rural areas. Lawmakers also adopted an amendment that would prevent these new licences from being sold to bars in other towns, in order to avoid speculation. The number of bars in France went from 200,000 to 35,000 over the last 50 years, a figure that could also be linked to a decreasing alcohol consumption in the country. The bill was passed almost unanimously despite concerns from the left and several associations over health risks. Alcohol causes 49,000 deaths each in France, according to the Health Ministry. Ahead of the vote on Monday, the French Society of Public Health had criticised 'the idea that the development of community ties, in rural areas as elsewhere, should be based on the opening bars with alcoholic drinks licences, rather than on providing social, educative or cultural services and activities.' The bill still has to go through the Senate to come into effect.
Euronews
10-03-2025
- Business
- Euronews
Anti-waste wrapping tax causes anger among French bakers
By Sarah Miansoni A new tax on wrapping papers and cardboard boxes for baguettes and pastries has caused anger among French bakers. ADVERTISEMENT In France, there is seemingly nothing controversial about going to your neighbourhood boulangerie and asking for your daily baguette or croissant on your way to work. But a new eco-minded policy might change that. In recent weeks, French bakers have expressed anger over a new recycling tax targeting the paper sheets and cardboard boxes used to wrap baguettes, pastries and cakes. For each client coming to the till, boulangeries are now expected to pay a tax of 0,0075 cents. The goal is for them to contribute to the recycling costs of their packaging and eventually reduce waste, in an attempt to protect the environment. The idea of a contribution to the fight against waste is not new. Boulangeries were formerly required to declare every single packaging item they used in order to calculate their annual contribution to anti-waste efforts. The new wrapping tax is designed to simplify this complex administrative system. Similar contributions have been introduced for other professions, including butchers and cheesemongers. Mylene Poirier puts baguettes in a bag for a customer at a bakery, in Versailles, west of Paris, Tuesday, 29 November 2022. Credit: AP Photo One too many taxes But bakers argue this tax is a new burden in an economy already plagued by rising energy costs and inflation on basic ingredients, such as flour or sugar. Since 2022, the French government has released various aid packages to help bakers who struggled with soaring electricity and gas prices following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For some, this wrapping tax is simply one too many. 'This is the straw that breaks the camel's back', said Dominique Anract, president of the National Confederation of French Boulangerie-Patisserie, in French newspaper Le Figaro. The average boulangerie welcomes 300 clients in a day, six days a week, which would make for an annual wrapping tax of about 700€. Dominique Anract advised bakers to slightly raise the price of their products to counter the effects of the tax on their revenues. Bakers also worry about the effects the tax could have on their customers, in a country where independent boulangeries still account for 52% of bread sales. Every day, 12 million French people buy a baguette. More than a piece of bread, it is also a cultural symbol. In 2022, UNESCO listed it as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The solution might simply be to adopt reusable cloth bags, traditionally known as sacs à pain and once broadly used. Wrapped in paper or not, French people seem far from ready to give up their beloved baguette.
Euronews
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
David Lynch to be honoured by World Soundtrack Awards at Belgium's Film Fest Gent
By Sarah Miansoni The director's 1980 film 'The Elephant Man' will be the centrepiece of this year's World Soundtrack Academy's Film Music Composition Contest. ADVERTISEMENT Belgium's largest film festival Film Fest Gent and the World Soundtrack Academy will celebrate the much-missed American director David Lynch during their annual Film Music Composition Contest. Young composers will be tasked to write a symphonic score for an excerpt of Lynch's 1980 cult classic The Elephant Man. Starring John Hurt in the titular role, The Elephant Man is based on the real-life story of English artist John Merrick. Due to his severe physical deformities, Merrick went on to be exhibited in freak shows across England. The feature received eight Academy Awards nominations, including Best Director for Lynch and Best Original Score for composer John Morris. Submissions for the Film Music Composition Contest are open until 12 May 2025 to composers under the age of 36. The winner will be presented with the Award for Best Original Composition by a Young Composer on 15 October 2025 during the World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony - as part of the 52nd edition of Film Fest Gent. In 2024, the prize was awarded to Dutch composer Florian van der Reijden for his work on an extract of Nicolas Roeg's 1990 movie The Witches. Lynch died in January aged 78 after being forced to relocate from his house along Sunset Boulevard due to the LA wildfires. Known for his dark, surrealist style, his most famous works included the films Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, as well as the celebrated TV show Twin Peaks. Film Fest Gent will take place from 8-19 October 2025.
