Te Papa Marae and French Film Festival

Rushed today for  a ten a.m. meeting with the Te Papa contacts to check out the Marae and top'n tail the procedure for the May 18 Candlelight Memorial. As the Maori are very tribal we have to observe strict protocol when  having an event in their saced meeting place, whether we have just a 'mihi', which is a welcome, or a formal 'pophiri' which involves a ceremonial entry and the symbolic paying of a 'koha' a donation, showing our respect for their place or 'papa'. Nikkie from the museum and Mark, the Maori rep who arrived a  little late, showed us through the various rooms and we also saw how the seating is to be arranged. The two hour event necessitates some really tight organising as it needs to be seamless. I am to do all the liaising with the two Choirs, and also with Gareth from Film Archives, who is showing a film background during the choral parts. After all this we adjourned for a coffee in a downstairs cafe which I hadn't been to before. The museum has everything, and Mark who recently  returned from seeing similar museums in Washington DC and NYC, said it was quite in advance of the ones he saw. I am not at all surprised.

After coffee we dispersed and I was off to my first French movie in the very large French Film Festival. The movie is all about fashion, one of France's obsessions, and which was also a large part of my adult working life, having worked all over Europe as a model in the seventies. So it will have some resonance I am sure.

Discussing the Candlelight...

in front of the beautiful Marae at Te Papa

More beauty at Te Papa

Now on to the French Film Fest at The Embassy

This was the movie, about a chic Parisian woman

called Carine Roitfeld, a former editor of French Vogue. It is the story of the launching her most expensive and chic 'Fashion Book', not a glossy magazine, but an enormous tome of fashion. It sold out two weeks after publication, and Carine is now established absolutely on the world fashion stage. It was indeed a fascinating 'voyeur' look at the very top creative talent in the world of fashion photography, an area which I knew well. It was like eating blancmange or pavlova until you were just a little sick, but not quite. It is a crazy world, and Karl Lagerfeld in the programme here with Carine and Gwyneth Paltrow, are the epitome of it. The movie is worth a look but only for fashion tragics such as me. 

What was most interesting was the study of her personality. Carine claims to be Parisian, and to all extents and purposes she is, but she is of Russian parentage which is manifested in her hard work ethic. Another fact is that she never married her partner, the father of her two children, although they are together for thirty years. She is indeed an artistic personality, who when young always wanted to be a ballet dancer - she can still do the splits but is essentially an entrepreneur/stylist who loves people. Her secret, all her friends say, is that she treats everyone the same, and they all are important to her. She makes everyone feel valuable and because of that they all work like crazy for her. This is her real secret which results in having the top people bend over backwards for her. 

She is a remarkable person, and in this world normally full of poseurs I came away feeling a great deal more respect as well for Karl Lagerfeld who is obviously one of her best friends. Donatella Versace, another friend of hers, on the other hand seems to be a veritable caricature of someone whose face is virtually stretched beyond recognition. But of course, that's show biz.