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The French Republic or France (French: République française or France) is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in Western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents.[1]

France is a democracy organised as a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is a developed country with the fifth-largest economy in the world in 2004.[2] Its main values are expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

France is one of the founding members of the European Union, and has the largest land area of all members. France is also a founding member of the United Nations. It is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council wielding veto power, and it is also one of only eight acknowledged nuclear powers in existence.

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Claude Monet's garden at Giverny, May 2002.

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The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: La Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen) is one of the fundamental documents of the French Revolution, defining a set of individual rights and collective rights of the people. It was adopted August 26, 1789, by the National Constituent Assembly (Assemblée nationale constituante), as the first step toward writing a constitution. It sets forth fundamental rights not only of French citizens but acknowledges these rights to all men without exception:

"First Article – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common utility."

The principles set forth in the declaration are of constitutional value in present-day French law and may be used to oppose legislation or other government activities.

Current events in France


November 7, 2005 - French riots continue for another night, first casualty reported Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec has been reported as the first casualty of recent rioting in France. The 61-year old man had been reported as being beaten by a hooded man last week and been in a coma since the attack. This is the first death related to rioting in mainly immigrant communities following the death of two teenagers in an electricity sub-station. The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, announced on Monday plans to allow the nation's regions to impose curfews. Mr. de Villepin appeared the day before on television with an appeal to end the violence. The president, Jacques Chirac, ended his silence on the rioting on Saturday, when he spoke to the press. "Those who want to sow violence or fear will be caught, tried and punished," he said. "But we also understand very well that we must move towards respect for each individual, justice and equality of opportunity. We are all completely determined to go down this road and pursue the efforts that are already under way in this domain." The Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, called for a radical overhaul of the French social model that he said, "in every aspect, needs to be fundamentally rebuilt." Arrests in the rioting total nearly 400 following the deaths of two youths on October 27. The unrest, which started in a Paris suburb, has spread to over 270 towns across France. More than 300 cars have been torched across the country, and 2 schools were burned. Full story

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Henri Langlois
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Henri Langlois

Henri Langlois (November 13, 1914 - January 13, 1977) was a pioneer in film preservation and restoration.

Langlois was born in Izmir, Turkey. He started his archives with private funds and only a handful of films but over the next few decades the collection grew to many thousands titles and the French government started financing it.

Henri Langlois, George Franju, and Jean Mitry, founded the Cinémathèque Française (a Paris-based film theater and museum) in 1936 which progressed from ten films in 1936 to more than 60,000 films by the early 70s. More than just an archivist, Langlois saved, restored and showed many films that were at risk of disintegration. Films are stored in celluloid, a material which requires a highly controlled environment and some degree of attention to survive over time.

During the Second World War, Langlois and his colleagues helped to save many films that were in risk of being destroyed due to the Nazi occupation of France.

Langlois made an important impact on the French 1960s New Wave directors, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Alain Resnais among others, and the generation of filmmakers that followed. Some of these filmmakers were called les enfants de la cinémathèque ("children of the cinémathèque").

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