French Events Around the U.S. in March

Text

March is a big month for French events in the US, because it brings with it Francophonie festivals in cities across the U.S., including Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Chicago. These festivals celebrate the rich diversity of the French language in French-speaking cultures all over the world. More than 40 embassies have joined together to present a series of concerts, films, lectures, culinary events, and literary salons exploring French culture in places from Quebec to Cameroon.Bon Entendeur

Festival de la Francophonie

In Atlanta, you can participate in a Brewery Tour & Beer Tasting led in French by Belgian brewers at Halfway Crooks Beer (March 21). The theater company La Compagnie Tilawcis from La Réunion in the Indian Ocean will present their new show, Frénésies, (March 13). There will also be film screenings of the Quebecois film Je Me Soulève (March 30), the Haitian film Freda (March 8), and the Swiss-French-Belgian film La Ligne (March 28).

In Washington, D.C., you can see the Malian duo Amadou & Mariam at 9:30 Club on Wednesday, March 22. There will be screenings of films like the Senegalese production Xalé (March 21), and Sawah (March 20), about an Egyptian DJ who gets stranded in Luxembourg on his way to Brussels.

In Houston, Kirby-Sur-Seine will perform classic French songs from Aznavour, Piaf, and Brel at La Tartine de Houston every Friday in March. On Sunday, March 26, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston will screen The Art of Silence, a documentary film about the mime Marcel Marceau. On Monday, March 27, Sur la Table in Dallas will host a cooking class featuring food from the French city of Dijon. And on Saturday, March 25, the Austin Public Library will host a French Afternoon with pétanque and live music.

The Chicago Festival de la Francophonie will kick off on Friday, March 3, with with a playlist of French and Francophone chansons led by Sam Dubin and Arkadiy, followed by dance music with the DJ Mwelwa Musambacine. A special film screening of French-Senegalese director Alice Diop’s legal drama Saint Omer will play on Wednesday, March 8, in honor of International Women’s Day. And on Friday, March 10, Swiss photographer François Robert will be in conversation with Jörg Oberschmied, Deputy Consul General of Switzerland in Chicago.

French Music and Film from Brooklyn to San Francisco

Maison Disco {D.A.N.C.E. in Paris} will offer a night of French dance music featuring Seb Posso, Lefti, and Ÿas at Avant Gardner in Brooklyn on Saturday, March 4.

Bon Entendeur, the French trio known for their remixes of popular French songs from the 60s and 70s, will continue their U.S. tour with March dates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Diego.

BAM in NYC will present a retrospective from March 24 through March 30, of works by the French filmmaker Axelle Ropert, along with a screening of her latest film Petit Solange.

Museum Exhibitions in New York and California

The exhibition, ‘The city and modernity… a young girl in the city’ will present 24 photographs from the 1994 Paris exhibit ‘La jeune fille dans la ville’ until April 16 at the Soho store of French fashion brand agnès b.

‘Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors’ will run through May 14 at The Museum at FIT in New York. The exhibit will showcase works of fashion and interior decoration from some of the great women couturiers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including French designers like Coco Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Lilly Daché, and Alix Grès.

‘Parisian Ecologies: The City Transformed in Nineteenth-Century Prints and Drawings’ at Pomona College’s Benton Museum of Art in Claremont, CA will premiere on Friday, March 24, with a collection of prints and drawings depicting Paris’s transformation from medieval times into modernity in the mid-19th century.

Catherine Rickman is a writer and professional francophile who has lived in Paris, New York, and Berlin. She is currently somewhere in Brooklyn with a fork in one hand and a pen in the other, and you can follow her adventures on Instagram @catrickman.

A close up of a sign

Frenchly
newsletter.

Get your weekly dose of Frenchly’s news.

Read more

Frenchly newsletter.

A close up of a sign

Get your weekly dose of Frenchly’s news.

Frenchly Newsletter.

A close up of a sign

Get your weekly dose of Frenchly stuff.