From “in” to “off”, Rima Abdul-Malak on familiar ground at the Festival d’Avignon
“My greatest memory in the Cour d’honneur is The Blood of Promises by Wajdi Mouawad in 2009, remembers Rima Abdul-Malak. After eleven hours of show and an indescribable ovation, we left in the early morning. The sun was rising in the streets of Avignon, we were on a cloud, it was magical. » Thirteen years later, she returns there as Minister of Culture. “I never thought this would happen to me”, she tells us. At 43, the new tenant of Rue de Valois lived, Thursday, July 7, “a very emotional moment. Entering this court after the whirlwind of my appointment, it gripped me”.
To follow Rima Abdul-Malak on the move at the Festival d’Avignon is to revisit her personal and professional journey. At all stages of her program, Friday July 8 and Saturday July 9, the new Minister of Culture is on conquered ground. She relives memories there, meets familiar faces. In the much evoked streets of the city of the Popes that she walks, no festival-goer knows who she is. On the other hand, when the former cultural adviser to President Emmanuel Macron goes to cultural places in Avignon, it is as if his entire curriculum vitae was scrolling.
For the first performance of Black Monk by Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, she was welcomed with open arms by Olivier Py and Paul Rondin. The former cultural adviser to Bertrand Delanoë at the town hall of Paris was known as the outgoing director of the Festival d’Avignon and its deputy director when they directed the national theater of the Odéon. Françoise Nyssen is there too. The former minister of culture, now president of the management association of the Festival d’Avignon, worked with Rima Abdul-Malak on the appointment of Tiago Rodrigues, the successor to Olivier Py. “Rima, it’s a chance for culture, I’m delighted”slips the boss of Actes Sud.
At the Lambert Collection, the new minister also finds Maria Carmela Mini, director of the Lille festival Latitudes contemporaines and co-president of the France Festivals federation. “In August 2021, when the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, we spent hours together on the phone to bring Afghan artists in danger to France”, remembers the minister. The painter and performer Kubra Khademi, who had to flee Kabul in 2015 to take refuge in Paris, was one of their essential points of contact. This Afghan feminist produced the poster for the Festival d’Avignon and is exhibiting her works this year at the Collection Lambert.
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