The 12th annual French Spring, a festival of French culture, will be held April 4-29. The festival will open with an outdoor light show, entitled "I Am a Dream" and performed by Spectaculairs Allumeurs d'Images. This 20-minute program is based on Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech and will be shown upon St. Sophia's Cathedral on April 4.
Freedom is the main idea, with a program that pays “homage to the courage and determination of the Ukrainian people during the last year and particularly during the Revolution of Dignity,” says Eric Tosatti, adviser on cultural issues and cooperation of the French Embassy in Ukraine and director of the French Institute in Ukraine. This year festival’s performances will have many references to Ukraine’s contemporary struggles in becoming a democratic, free and prosperous society.
The festival will also take place in Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhya, Lviv, Odesa, Rivne and Kharkiv.
Organizers are seeking ways to reach people in the war-torn Donbas and Russian-occupied Crimea.
“This year we are not able to send any shows or people to Donetsk, Sevastopol or Simferopol because it’s too dangerous and forbidden,” Tosatti says. “However, we will try to connect with the Alliance Française’s students in Sevastopol and Simferopol where we used to have our cultural centers via Skype. We want to stay in touch and keep solidarity with those people.”
The festival started 12 years ago. Its popularity made it an annual event. Since 2004, the French Spring festival has been held every April and has become one of the most remarkable spring cultural events in Ukraine.
Veronika Makhnylya, 20, a French-language student at Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, first attended the event at the age of 15 with her mother. Since then Makhnyla has not missed the festival. Her favorite is watching films that are not widely released in Ukraine.
The number of festival fans grows every year.
Tetyana Sichkarenko, advertising manager of the Kyiv movie theater, says that the numbers of people who come to her cinema during the festival are higher than other festivals. “People especially like French comedies, which sell well,” Sichkarenko says.
The festival is supported by the French Embassy in Ukraine, the French Institute in Ukraine and the international organization Alliance Francaise. Credit Agricole Bank and the Premier Palace Hotel are major sponsors of this year’s event.
“Many Ukrainian theatres and cinemas contribute to the event as well. We organize French Spring only in Ukraine,” Tosatti says. “The organizing of such cultural events in times of war is very important for us as it is a sign of solidarity with Ukraine.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]
