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Robert Laffont
EAN : 9782221106587
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 270
Size : 135 x 215 mm
My Balagan Life

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Release date : 09/10/2008
1944, Auschwitz. 1950, Saint-Germain-des-Prés. 1968, Beijing. A life of disorder, provocation, and adventure.
Marceline Rozenberg, the daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, was fifteen when she arrived at Birkenau—the extermination camp at Auschwitz. She came out eighteen months later, starved of life and on the brink of death. She married a young man with a nice French name, then left him, haunted the “blue... Marceline Rozenberg, the daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants, was fifteen when she arrived at Birkenau—the extermination camp at Auschwitz. She came out eighteen months later, starved of life and on the brink of death. She married a young man with a nice French name, then left him, haunted the “blue nights” in the clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, joined the Communist Party, carried luggage for the National Liberation Front, and fought for abortion rights, taking one risk after another. Then she met the renowned documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens, and a love affair with him and with cinema began. She ended up in Vietnam during the bombings and in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. While the death camps prevented Marceline from going to college, she learned many essential life lessons that contributed to her bold, poetic work in film. As an actress for Jean Rouch and co-director with Joris Ivens, as well as directing La Petite Prairie aux Bouleaux on her own, she earned the unswerving esteem of critics and film lovers. Scatterbrained and mischievous, the little curly-haired redhead has all the airs of an elf. Even at Birkenau, she thumbed her nose at the devil, stole a cooking pot, told funny stories, and made lifelong friends, including Simone Veil. Not really a revolutionary, but more of a troublemaker, Marceline has never stopped flirting with death. Her laugh is at times tinged with despair, such as when she evokes the zoot-suit dance she went to right before she was deported to Auschwitz; or her brother’s suicide, he who was so haunted by the Shoah that he took himself for a member of the SS; and in paying homage to Joris Ivens, the man of her life whose body was “as beautiful as an old oak tree.” In the story of Marceline’s life, we will find no regrets, only an infinite lucidity and self-mockery as healthy as it is charming.
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EAN : 9782221106587
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 270
Size : 135 x 215 mm
Robert Laffont