It was once the independent commune (municipality) of Belleville which was annexed by the City of Paris in 1860 and divided between two arrondissements Geographically, the neighborhood is situated on and around a hill which vies with Montmartre as the highest in Paris. The name Belleville literally means "beautiful town".
, Paris from the hill of Belleville.]]
During the first half of the 20th century, many immigrants settled there: Ottoman Armenians fleeing systematic massacres (1915–1917), Ottoman Greeks fleeing persecution in Anatolia around 1920, German Jews fleeing systematic Nazi persecutions during the 1930s, and Spaniards fleeing civil war in 1936. Many Algerians and Tunisian Jews arrived in the early 1960s.
Belleville is home to one of the largest congregations of the Reformed Church of France. The Église Réformée de Belleville has been in the area since shortly before World War I.
During the 1980s Parisian artists and musicians, attracted by the cheaper rents, the numerous vacant large spaces, as well as the old Paris charm of its smaller streets (Belleville was ignored, perhaps spared, during much of the architectural modernization efforts and reparations of the 1960s and 1970s, the greatest exception being the area around the Place des Fêtes), started moving there. Many artists now live and work in Belleville and studios are scattered throughout the quartier. Some abandoned factories have been transformed into art squats, where several alternative artists and musicians, such as the band Les Rita Mitsouko began their careers.
The demographics of the neighborhood have undergone many changes throughout the decades. While Armenians, Greeks, and Ashkenazi Jews were once the predominant ethnic groups, North Africans, and more recently, sub-Saharan Africans have been displacing these others.
Within the neighborhood there is a cemetery and park, the Parc de Belleville, which ascends the western slope of the hill and offers, in addition to a panoramic view of the Paris skyline, a strikingly modern contrast to the classical gardens of the city center and the eccentric nineteenth century romanticism of the nearby Parc des Buttes Chaumont. A School of Architecture is also located in Belleville.
The iconic French singer Édith Piaf grew up there and, according to legend, was born under a lamppost on the steps of the Rue de Belleville. A commemorative plaque can be found at number 72. A true Bellevilloise, Piaf sang and spoke the French language in a way that epitomized the accent de Belleville, which has been compared to the Cockney accent of London, England, although the Parisian dialect is nowadays rarely heard. Belleville is prominently featured in the 2007 biographical film of her life, La Vie En Rose.
Other famous Bellevillois include film director Maurice Tourneur, legendary French can-can dancer Jane Avril and popular singer and actor Eddy Mitchell.
The Malaussène Saga, a series of crime novels written by contemporary author Daniel Pennac, is set in Belleville. Belleville is the subject of several French songs, including Eddy Mitchell's "Belleville ou Nashville?" and Claude Nougaro's "Le Barbier de Belleville."
Belleville has undergone much gentrification over the years, similar to that of Brooklyn, New York. The similarities were so strong that it took on Belleville's name. Belleville Bistro in Park Slope, Brooklyn was 'named after the raffish hilltop Paris neighborhood.'
Category:Districts of Paris Category:19th arrondissement of Paris Category:20th arrondissement of Paris Category:Chinatowns in Europe
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| Name | Alphonse Pierre Juin |
|---|---|
| Died | (aged 78) |
| Placeofbirth | Bône, Algeria |
| Placeofdeath | Paris, France |
| Allegiance | -1912-1940 Vichy France-1941 -1942-45 |
| Serviceyears | 1912–1962 |
| Rank | Général d'Armée |
| Commands | 15th Motorized Infantry DivisionFrench Expeditionary Corps |
| Battles | World War I World War II |
| Awards | Marshal of FranceGrand Croix de la Légion d'honneurMédaille militaireCroix de guerre |
Alphonse Pierre Juin (16 December 1888 – 27 January 1967) was a Marshal of France.
After the war, he entered the "ecole de guerre" and had excellent results. He choose to serve in Africa again, first under the orders of Lyautey, then under those of Petain and Giraud. He served in the different staffs of the African officers.
In 1938, Juin was nominated to command a brigade. By the outbreak of World War II, he was in command of a division, the 15th Motorized Infantry Division. The division was encircled at Lille during the Battle of France and Juin was captured. Until 1941 he was kept as a prisoner of war in German custody. However during that year he was released at the behest of the Vichy Government and was assigned by them to command French forces in North Africa.
After the invasion of Algeria and Morocco by British and American forces in November 1942, Juin changed sides and ordered General Barré's forces in Tunisia to resist against the Germans and the Italians.
His great skills were exhibited during the Italian campaign when he commanded the French Expeditionary Corps in the US Fifth Army. The Corps' expertise in mountain warfare was particularly well used. The FEC was one of the crucial factors in the breaking of the Winter Line in May 1944. It was Juin who made the plan to break the Gustav line; he took the Belvedere, Monte Majo, attacked the Liri valley, won the battle of the Garigliano, the battle of the East of Rome and played an important part in the battle for Sienna. Juin's ability to analyze where things had gone wrong in some initial thrust and to set things right for the new effort earned him great respect among his contemporaries and among historians of the war such as the American, Rick Atkinson. He was also very firm in bringing the wild Moroccan irregulars, the goumiers, back under discipline and control after several excesses of mass rapine and pillage.
Following this assignment he was Chief of Staff of French forces and represented France at the San Francisco Conference. He was also in charge of organizing the French Army and had contact both with SHAEF and with General De Lattre de Tassigny, commander of the First French Army.
In 1947 he returned to Africa as the Resident General in Morocco. He opposed Moroccan attempts to gain independence. Next came a senior NATO position as he assumed command of CENTAG until 1956. During his NATO command, in 1952, he was promoted to Marshal of France. He was greatly opposed to Charles de Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria, and he retired in 1962 as a result of the incident. (de Gaulle may have demanded Juin's resignation, but publicly announced that he was placing Juin "in the reserve of the Republic.")
Category:1888 births Category:1967 deaths Category:People from Annaba Category:Members of the Académie française Category:Marshals of France Category:Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur Category:French military personnel of World War I Category:French military personnel of World War II Category:Pieds-noirs Category:Saint-Cyrians Category:Recipients of the Croix de Guerre (France) Category:Recipients of the Médaille Militaire
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Édith Piaf |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Édith Giovanna Gassion |
| Alias | La Môme Piaf(The Little Sparrow) |
| Born | December 19, 1915Belleville, Paris, France |
| Died | Plascassier, France |
| Instrument | Voice |
| Genre | CabaretTorch songsChanson |
| Occupation | Singer, songwriter, actress |
| Years active | 1935–1963 |
Édith Piaf (; 19 December 1915 – 11 October 1963), born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads. Among her songs are "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "l'Accordéoniste" (1955), and "Padam... Padam..." (1951).
She was named Édith after the World War I British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity. Piaf—a Francilien colloquialism for "sparrow"—was a nickname she would receive 20 years later.
Her mother, Annetta Giovanna Maillard (1895–1945), was of French descent on her father's side and of Italian and Berber origin on her mother's. She was a native of Livorno, a port city on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. She worked as a café singer under the name Line Marsa. with a past in the theatre. Édith's parents soon abandoned her, and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha) Saïd ben Mohammed (1876–1930). Before he enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I, her father took her to his mother, who ran a brothel in Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf. inspired him to give her the nickname that would stay with her for the rest of her life and serve as her stage name, La Môme Piaf A barrage of negative media attention Piaf dated a Jewish pianist during this time and co-wrote a subtle protest song with Monnot. earned Piaf the right to pose for photographs with French prisoners of war, to boost their morale. The Frenchmen were supposedly able to cut out their photos and use them as forged passport photos. Piaf and Cerdan's affair made international headlines, (according to some, 10 October in Paris). She had been drifting in and out of consciousness for several months. Charles Aznavour recalled that Piaf's funeral procession was the only time since the end of World War II that he saw Parisian traffic come to a complete stop.
In Paris, a two-room museum is dedicated to her, the Musée Édith Piaf (5 rue Crespin du Gast).
Piaf's relationship with Cerdan was also depicted in film by Claude Lelouch in the movie Édith et Marcel (1983), with Marcel Cerdan Jr. in the role of his father and Évelyne Bouix portraying Piaf. The film Piaf (1974) depicted her early years, and starred Brigitte Ariel, with early Piaf songs performed by Betty Mars.
In 1996, Ari Folman released a near futuristic comedy Saint Clara. In this movie, Édith Piaf is repeatedly mentioned by many of the adults, who remember her seemingly from school, and prove that they are part of the leading culture, as opposed to the immigrants, but the children on both sides have no knowledge of her, and ask who she was. The movie ends with the local men discovering that the Russian immigrants were intimately familiar with Piaf.
In the film Inception (2010), her song "Non, je ne regrette rien" is used frequently to signal to the characters that they are about to be ejected from the dream. The same song played several times slower than the original is also one the film's main musical themes. The film also stars Marion Cotillard, who had portrayed Piaf in La Vie En Rose.
Grace Jones in her song Slave to the Rhythm (1985 extended version) begins with an introductory narration that quotes Edith Piaf: "This is what Edith Piaf used to say, use your faults, use your defects, then you're going to be a star...".
In the film Saving Private Ryan Piaf's 1943 songs C'Était Une Histoire D'Amour and Tu Es Partout are central to providing a common thread of longing for loves and lives left behind in scenes between Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and Private Ryan (Matt Damon) as well as providing a context for anecdotes from other central characters.
;1933
;1934
;1935
;1936 (from the movie La Garçonne)
;1937
;1938
;1939
;1940
;1941 (from the movie Montmartre-sur-Seine)
;1942 (from the movie Montmartre-sur-Seine)
;1943 (from the movie Montmartre-sur-Seine)
;1944
;1945
;1946 (with Les Compagnons de la chanson) (with Les Compagnons de la Chanson) (with Les Compagnons de la Chanson) (with Les Compagnons de la Chanson)
;1947 (from the movie Neuf Garçons, Un Cœur) (from the movie Neuf Garçons, Un Cœur)
;1948
;1949 (from the movie L'Homme aux Mains d'Argile)
;1950
;1951 (with Eddie Constantine) (with Eddie Constantine) (with M. Jiteau)
;1952 (from the movie Boum sur Paris) (with Jacques Pills) (from the movie Boum sur Paris)
;1953 (with Jacques Pills) (from the movie Boum sur Paris)
;1954 (from the movie Si Versailles M'Était Conté) (from the movie French Cancan)
;1955
;1956
;1957
;1958
;1959
;1960
;1961
;1962 (with Théo Sarapo) (with Charles Dumont) (with Mikis Theodorakis/Jacques Plante) (with Théo Sarapo)
;1963 (her last recording)
There are in excess of 80 albums of Édith Piaf's songs available on online music stores.
Category:1915 births Category:1963 deaths Category:1930s singers Category:1940s singers Category:1950s singers Category:1960s singers Category:People from Paris Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Category:Cabaret singers Category:Cancer deaths in France Category:Deaths from liver cancer Category:French buskers Category:French female singers Category:French-language singers Category:French people of Italian descent Category:French people of Algerian descent Category:French pop singers Category:French Resistance members Category:Torch singers
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
