La Nuit de Pub Francophone

I had gone for La Nuit de Pub Francophone organised to celebrate rancophonie day, by Alliance Francaise on 19th March at the Jai Hind auditorium...the venue isn't important, nor the date (though I must inform you that Francophonie day is 20th March)...anyway cutting the crap and coming to the point - this concept is very cool. initiated by Jean-Marie Bouriscot, a film buff who collected over 7,00,000 films from all over the world, La Nuit de Puublivores (Night of Ad-Eaters) was created in 1981 in Paris. Each year 500 publicity films are screened from around the world on varied themes. The event is now in its 23rd year and has visited 160 cities and 47 countries to celebrate more than 200 years of francophonie publicity.

La Nuit de Pub Francophone organised by AF Mumbai, had support from the Consulates of France (biensur!),Belgium, Mauritius, Canada, Switzerland and Madagascar(which the prini of Jai Hind college pronounced as MAD SAGAR!) , the Consul-Generals of all but the last two attended the screening. They screened a collection of the best publicity spots from all times, starting from the first one created by the Lumiere brothers in 1898 to to latest creations from the Francophone countries : France, Switzerland, Belgium, Canda, Central African countries, North African countries and some from the Middle East.

Some of the Ad-films were down-right stupid, like our desi variety...but some of them were truly ingenious - like the Milk ads from Switzerland, the Red Bull ad from Belgium, the Palm Beer ads from Belgium, Philips Ad from France, the Chanel no.5 ad from France etc etc....my favorites were the Milk and Palm Beer ads!!! 2 ads I found a bit shocking, were the Condom ads from Switzerland (amazingly direct and well they make you sit up in shock when you first see them!) and the ad for a literacy campaign (Swiss)...the statistics are shocking!

This was the first event organised by AF that I've attended (embarassed to admit it!!), and I'm glad our class decided to go for it, instead of having a regular class (this is much more edcuative in terms of culture and accent and intonation etc)...now I'm eager to attend more of these things - maybe in April before Niv III gets over and defi in Pune!!! Chalo enough about Publivores...