Weekly news review in English from France:

This is News from France, a weekly review in English, today Sunday 10 January:

The focus for this week was:

President Emmanuel Macron’s response to the events in Washington on 6 January

The development of the Covid pandemic in France and the health service vaccination programme

The first week of trade with the UK following Brexit

France’s welcome to finance companies wishing to relocate from London, and other business news.

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French President Emmanuel Macron was quick to respond to the attack on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday.

In the early hours of Thursday, he made a statement from the Elysee Palace – beginning in French before finishing in English.

Macron said “What happened today in Washington is not American”

Five hours later, far-right leader Marine le Pen was on morning television to acknowledge for the first time that Jo Biden had won the November presidential elections.

Le Pen and her party are seen as the major threat to a second term for Macron in the presidential elections next year.

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In France, new cases of the Covid virus continued to be reported at an average of 20,000 per day. The government had hoped to see this number fall to 5,000 per day.

As of this weekend, there have been at least 2,7 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in France and a total of 67,599 (sixty-seven thousand five hundred and ninety-nine) deaths.

Hundreds of medical centers across France have been announced as the vaccination programme is developed in the coming weeks.

Further measures to restrict movement were announced by the French Prime Minister Jean Castex and a nightly curfew is being extended in more than 15 departments in the northeast and southeast of the country to 18hours ( 6 p.m.). All other departments have a curfew from 8 p.m. Schools are open while people are being urged to work from home. People must wear a mask in all venues and bars, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, museums and gyms remain closed.

Among the museums is the new art gallery of French billionaire retailer Francois Pinault. The renovated Bourse de Commerce or stock exchange building in central Paris was due to open this month with some of Pinault’s 5,000 works on display. He also has two major galleries in Venice.

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The first week of January saw the first finance and trade effects following the UK’s departure from the European Union.

The Brexit deal between London and the EU agreed before Christmas did not cover financial market access. The system in the EU offered to UK banks known as passporting ended with Brexit.

Ahead of the new year, over a trillion euros in assets ($1.55 trillion US dollars) belonging to EU customers were moved from London to the EU. On the first day of trading in January, nearly €6 bn billion euros of EU share dealing shifted away from London, according to reports in the Financial Times.

France now hosts the European Banking Association in Paris and so far, financial firms in London have moved around 7,500 jobs into Europe, according to accountancy firm EY.

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British retailers – including food companies Marks and Spencer – faced problems with paperwork at the border in January. They now need to state country of origin for all ingredients coming into the EU. M&S and others, including department store John Lewis and luxury food store Fortnum and Mason have suspended deliveries into Europe as a result.

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In business news, Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury said during a conference call with journalists, he was “cautiously optimistic for 2021.” The Group hopes to increase production of single-aisle aircraft in the second half of the year.

Airbus which employs around 40,000 people from its Toulouse headquarters reported a 767-million-euro net loss for the third quarter of 2020.

In June the French government announced a a €15 billion euro support package for the aerospace sector. Minister for Finance Bruno Le Maire said it was primarily aimed at saving 300,000 direct and indirect jobs in the sector, as well as the 1,300 companies involved in the supply chain for the aerospace industry.

The bailout for airline Air France will allow it to progress its order for nearly 100 new Airbus planes. It includes 38 long-haul A350s.

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Two French start-up companies benefitted from the EU’s first round of direct equity investments through the new European Innovation Council Fund.

15 million euros has been placed with CorWave in exchange for an equity stake in the region of 10 to 25 percent.

Corwave provides medical solutions for patients with advanced heart failure.

XSUN, a solar aircraft company which designs energy-independent drones is another of the French companies to receive investment under the fund.

A total of 159 start-ups across the EU have been selected for the first round of direct equity investments of 178 million euros.

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This has been News from France, a weekly review in English, today Sunday 10 January 2021.

Venice has slowly regained its cultural and social life after the serious flooding at the start of the year and the onset of Covid cases and lockdown which brought mass tourism to an abrupt halt.

The 76th Venice International Film Festival, organised by La Biennale di Venezia opened last Wednesday and runs until Saturday 12 September 2020.

Just as it was the first international film festival when it began in 1932, it is the first film festival on the major circuit to be held since the pandemic meant cinemas were closed and work on film sets came to an abrupt stop.

Unusually, tickets have been offered online for sale this year just ahead of the events – when usually they are snapped up well in advance. This is despite the fact that capacity in the theatres is reduced by mandatory empty seats between each film watcher and strict social distancing and careful checks for temperature and mask wearing which has changed the atmosphere of the event. Actor Cate Blanchett is Jury President and for the first time in 11 years, an Italian film opened the festival: The Ties, directed by Daniele Luchetti.

At the same time, the Venice Glass Week (5 to 13 September 2020) was launched in the open spaces of the Piazzo San Marco and focuses on La Serenissima’s centuries-old glassmaking skills.

Open-space gatherings of artists in the usually closed and rather secretive glassworks of the next-door island of Murano have brought established and new artists together in a public space at a time when their work and possibilities for exhibitions have been put on hold.

The Venice Glass Week is made up of about 67 individual exhibitions in spaces around the lagoon; among them is number 49, “Attraverso la mente” which opened at the Santa Marta Fabbricato Demaniale in Dorsoduro.

Among the artists exhibiting there is Tessa Rosenfeld (@tessacalenda). She told Arts and Media Europe “To me, glass represents transparency. It hints at something other-worldly and refined. My dormant babes are in essence, transparent. I’d like to think that observing them, one can see beyond.”

Born in Santa Monica, California Tessa lives in Salento, way down the boot of Italy. “I was asked to choose a piece of my work and the first thing that came to mind was an image that could reflect purity, possibly without a stain. Everything seems stained these days.”

“My next project is creating large panels and tryptics. I begin to like the idea of replicating figures and images all of the same genus. Many dormant babes in different pastel shades evoke a sense of transcendency; give me peace. This, as far as Venice is concerned. There are other images as well. Of a darker sort, especially one I am particularly fond of: Tadzio, the ephebic youth reminiscent of Visconti’s movie “Death in Venice.” this next project is named “IO…..Myself, each in different colours.”

Arts and Media Europe is an occasional report and podcast with news of developing programmes and events.

As opera houses open up for the season and concert halls welcome musicians for new programmes after the summer festivals, the focus for classical music in France is on individual artists, many of them independent and outside the agency circuit.

YouTube, Spotify and Vimeo have allowed classical musicians to play directly to their audiences, and develop new ones.

Two musicians come to mind in France – The American Joachim Horsley with his “Beethoven in Havana” programme and French pianist Caroline Haffner with her Chopin Ballades World Tour 2019-2022.

Joachim has millions of views for his crossover programme.

Caroline has reached new audiences and found again people who remember her from her early career. She plays again in Paris at the end of October.

Both appear at the not-for-profit New Year Music Festival in Gstaad in December.

Joachim Horsley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZRb0FyAa9s

Caroline Haffner: https://vimeo.com/344746816

In Gstaad: https://bachtrack.com/search-events/freetext=Gstaad%20Music%20festival

The festival opens the City of Bonn’s international celebrations for the Beethoven anniversary – Beethoven 2020 – and Caroline is an artist playing for the Beethoven Pastoral Project with a recital in Venice, Italy in June.

New ways of finding audiences – but all dependent on artistry in music. Great moves.

After seven years working in the English Newsroom of Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, I set sail (well drove a French transit van) out of Bonn for France – and now divide my time between Paris, La Rochefoucauld and Venice, Italy.

I’ll be writing and sending regular, written and audio reports on news, views and other bits and pieces.

Jane Mcintosh, rue de Provence, 75009 Paris

and La Rochefoucauld, Charente

Tel: +33 (0)7 67 61 20 42

E: arts.exmes@gmail.com

Twitter: @mcintosh24

Facebook: gianna.mcintosh.54

As Amazon’s Diego Piacentini heads for Rome to lead PM Matteo Renzi’s digital technology office in Italy @matteorenzi for the next couple of years, a note from the easily connected Serenissima where the cables go through water rather than brick.

Anyone with an imob.venezia travel card and a mobile phone number can register to use the Cittadinanza Digitale Wi-Fi network.

User figures to date are interesting. Nearly 60,000 people have signed up – 44,000 of them residents and 14,500 ‘city users’ – people who come to study or work in Venice.

Of those who login on an average day, they are online for about three or four hours using up about 430GB. There are more men than women using the network and most of them are aged 41 years and upwards. The Centro Storico is where you will find most of them – and in particular Piazzale Roma e Stazione, Piazza San Marco and Accademia. Most people are outdoors when they use the network with its 254 hotspots.

@mcintosh24 – Thursday 11 February 2016