Réflexions
Beyond the Red Carpet: The Business of Film Festivals
In May 2023, I attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time, thanks to a “cinéphile” accreditation that I obtained through Audencia’s film association Les Hallucinés. We were a group of ten students heading to one of the most famous cultural events in the world, and everything looked exactly like I had imagined. Red carpets, Read more
TV Series as a Reflection of Daily and Societal Anxieties
For a long time, TV series were perceived as simple entertainment. We watched them to pass the time, relax after a day’s work, or escape from the everyday. Today, this view is increasingly outdated. Some series no longer simply seek to entertain: they disturb, question, and sometimes leave the viewer with a profound sense of Read more
Blood antiquities: The complicity of western museums in the Syrian conflict
When we think of war, we think about destruction. However, there is often a silent war against memory. The conflict that ravages Syria since 2011 has not only tragically displaced and killed millions, but has also erased a good part of Syrian’s historical heritage, that is to say the cradle of civilization. This allowed the Read more
The Louvre heist: how 7 minutes shook the world of cultural heritage
Thieves stole Empress Eugénie’s necklace from the Louvre in seven minutes, exposing critical security gaps. The theft shattered more than glass – it violated the artworks’ « aura » that Walter Benjamin described. These jewels are vessels of national memory; their loss erases pages from France’s material autobiography. The treasures will likely be disassembled, their provenance destroyed. Despite planned security upgrades, implementation failed. While technology like microtagging helps, true protection requires treating heritage as shared identity rather than power symbols. The empty display case reminds us that value lies not in carats, but in memory – making vigilance an act of collective care. Read more
Death of albums or death of our attention span?
25, Super Trouper, Hit Me Hard and Soft, Igor or American Idiot, I could go on and on about my personal iconic albums. What about you? When was the last time you found yourself listening to a full-length album of an artist, with no break or song skipped? This may sound like an odd question Read more
From La Dolce Vita to La Grande Bellezza: Fifty Years of Italian Splendor and Melancholy
Italian cinema has always possessed a rare gift: the ability to turn life itself into a spectacle, and the spectacle into a meditation on life. From Il Sorpasso to 8½, from La Dolce Vita to Cinema Paradiso, Malèna, and La Grande Bellezza, we travel through more than half a century of Italian history and yet, Read more
A paradoxe of writing : it disappears when we can understand it, and only appears once we face an unknown one
Writing, when it works, disappears into reading. — paraphrasing Roland Barthes thesis in The Degree zero of writing, 1953. When faced with a stele covered in hieroglyphs, an ancient Chinese manuscript, or a Linear A tablet, something happens. Writing lies before us, familiar in its materiality : lines, strokes, columns, engravings, yet utterly foreign. We read Read more
Music streaming: innovation, cultural monitoring, and human-driven solutions
Digital Communities and the Birth of Streaming At the end of the 1990s and the dawn of the 2000s, music became one of the first fields to experiment with digital culture. Whether on forums, sharing sites, or peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms, self-organized and self-regulated communities emerged: uploaders, curators, collectors, and enthusiasts. Even today, these communities persist, Read more
How Brands Use TikTok and Instagram to Build Cultural Identity
I was scrolling through TikTok one night — just mindlessly switching from one short video to another — when a Gucci post suddenly stopped me. It wasn’t a typical luxury-brand ad: no polished studio light, no model’s perfect smile, just a quick, messy, almost spontaneous clip. But somehow, it felt intentional. That raw, unfiltered energy Read more
La Haine: what happens when an emblematic movie of the French social divide becomes a musical?
Everyone knows La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz’s emblematic movie released in 1995, which has become a work of art at the heart of French cultural heritage and the cult reference of French urban culture. The film follows a day in the life of three young men from the suburbs the day after riots, inspired by a real Read more