Bastille Day
Bastille Day
Today (7/14) is the French holiday Bastille Day and it marks the storming of a Paris stronghold 233 years ago. Since then, the day has grown to celebrate France’s independence, culture, and resilience. WFUV’s Madison Colombo spoke to the French Institute:Alliance Française (FIAF) to discuss their Bastille Day festival, and about the New York French community:
Many New Yorkers know today as Bastille Day, but say that to someone from France, and you might get a funny look. Selima Selon, a French expat, says most people from France, just call it July 14th. Selon has lived in New York for the last 30 years. She considers herself a real New Yorker, but before that, she lived in Paris. She’s celebrating at the French Institute Alliance Française, also known as FIAF’s, Bastille Day festival. Selon says she’s an annual attendee, “I come to the festival every year because I love it. I feel like for me, I’m a New Yorker now, but I used to live in Paris, and it's reminiscent of my time living there. It's symbolic, you have not only the French people, but I love seeing the French stores, and the French mentality. It’s the best, I love being here.”
Director of programming at FIAF, Mathilde Augé, says they’ve been putting on the festival for the last 25 years, and it's only grown since then. Augé says after a 2 year hiatus due to COVID, their excited to once again bring together people from around the city to celebrate their culture, “To find again this feeling of community, it’s another occasion for us to reconnect with French people, francophones people, and francophiles of New York, to all be together to celebrate these French values of Bastille day.”
New York is home to about 81,000 French speakers, making it one of the top 10 languages spoken in the city. Tatyana Franck, president of FIAF, says it's important to learn about a heritage so many New Yorkers share, “Alliance Française’s mission is to promote French language, and also francophone cultures. So it's very, very important that people can learn French here in New York, and can learn about its history, its cultural heritage, and make new discoveries.”
This year the festival played to all the senses and featured everything from champagne tasting, to a film premiere, and even music sung in French, English, and Creole. Paul Beaubrun, a performer from Haiti at the festival, says his music and the event are about unity, “When I feel Bastille day, it feels like a day of unity, bringing people together. I think this is what our music is about, my music, that's what it's about, the spirituality, the coming together. A day like that, that's what it would represent in bringing everyone together. Not only French speaking people, but everyone in New York.”
While many French speakers flocked to the FIAF’s festival, it's not only for those who know the language. People from all over the tri-state area came to enjoy the festivities on Madison Avenue, and experience a convivial atmosphere under the summer sun. Jennifer Belle and Maury Linder are some of those people. They say, they didn't know much about the holiday, but the event seemed too good to pass up,“We really wanted to hang out today, and we wanted to do a fun summer activity, so I literally typed that into Google and this came up. It just looked like a fun, amazing event, so well, first Bastille Day, let’s do it.” While everyone who arrived might not have known about the holiday, they certainly left having learned a little about the New York French community.
You can learn more about FIAF's future events at the links below:
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