Alain may refer to:
Alain Badiou (French pronunciation: [alɛ̃ badju] (listen) (help·info); born 17 January 1937 in Rabat, Morocco) is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS).
Badiou has written about the concepts of being, truth and the subject in a way that, he claims, is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. Politically, Badiou is committed to the far left, and to the communist tradition.
Slavoj Žižek has written of Badiou that he is "a figure like Plato or Hegel walk[ing] here among us".
Badiou was a student at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand and then the Ecole Normale Supérieure (1957–1961). He taught at the lycée in Reims from 1963 where he became a close friend of fellow playwright (and philosopher) François Regnault, and published a couple of novels before moving to the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) in 1969. Badiou was politically active very early on, and was one of the founding members of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). The PSU was particularly active in the struggle for the decolonization of Algeria. He wrote his first novel, Almagestes, in 1964. In 1967 he joined a study group organized by Louis Althusser, became increasingly influenced by Jacques Lacan and became a member of the editorial board of Cahiers pour l’Analyse. By then he "already had a solid grounding in mathematics and logic (along with Lacanian theory)", and his own two contributions to the pages of Cahiers "anticipate many of the distinctive concerns of his later philosophy".
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni (25 February 1707 – 6 February 1793) was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes. Though he wrote in French and Italian, his plays make rich use of the Venetian language, regional vernacular, and colloquialisms. Goldoni also wrote under the pen name and title "Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade," which he claimed in his memoirs the "Arcadians of Rome" bestowed on him.
There is an abundance of autobiographical information on Goldoni, most of which comes from the introductions to his plays and from his Memoirs. However, these memoirs are known to contain many errors of fact, especially about his earlier years.
In these memoirs, he paints himself as a born comedian, careless, light-hearted and with a happy temperament, proof against all strokes of fate, yet thoroughly respectable and honorable.
Michèle Rosier (born 1930) is a French fashion journalist and designer who founded the V de V sportswear label. In addition to this, she has worked as a film director and screenwriter since 1973.
Michèle Rosier was born in 1930. She is the daughter of the journalists Pierre Lazareff (1907–1972) and Hélène Gordon-Lazareff (1909–1988) who between them founded Elle magazine. She followed in her parents' footsteps by becoming a fashion journalist herself, and then a sportswear designer. In 1963 she founded the V de V company. Her sportswear designs, including swimwear and ski suits, were an immediate success. She was nicknamed the "Vinyl Girl" . The International Herald Tribune compared Rosier's "style without nostalgia" for ready-to-wear to Andre Courrèges's haute couture designs. A V de V raincoat was selected as part of the Dress Of The Year for 1966, and she designed parachute jumpsuits for Raquel Welch in the 1967 film Fathom
Since 1973 Rosier has worked as a film director and screenwriter for French-language cinema.
Lino Ventura (14 July 1919 – 22 October 1987), was an Italian actor who starred in French movies.
Born as Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura in Parma, Italy to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, "Lino" dropped out of school at the age of eight and later took on a variety of jobs. At one point Ventura was pursuing a prizefighting and professional wrestling career but had to end it because of an injury. Despite living most of his life in France, he never acquired French citizenship.[citation needed]
In 1953, totally by happenstance, one of his friends mentioned him to Jacques Becker who was looking for an Italian actor to play opposite Jean Gabin in a gangster movie called Touchez pas au grisbi. Becker offered him on the spot the role of Angelo, that Ventura refused at first but then accepted. He has such a presence in the movie that the whole profession took notice.
Ventura started to build up an acting career in similar hard boiled gangster movies, often playing beside his friend Jean Gabin. A couple of his most famous roles include the portrait of corrupt police chief Tiger Brown in 1963's The Threepenny Opera and mob boss Vito Genovese in The Valachi Papers.