It’s Bastille Day! What better way to celebrate the national French holiday (it commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison) than to watch some French cinema?! The list below is comprised of 10 of my favorite French films, it’s in no way a definitive list, but each and every film is not only great, but is also filled with all that makes France a one of a kind place.

Also, takepart to learn about how we can “storm” prisons here. Or in other words how The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is promoting positive alternatives to violence and incarceration.

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10) Beauty and the Beast - Beautiful and for the entire family, Jean Cocteau creates a haunting world that everyone should visit.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Katie Halper:

“The First Time I Every Saw Your Face” May Be the First Time You Hear About Ewan MacColl

California’s Gay Marriage Ban Overturned & 5 Ways To Take Action

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Nicole Hughes:

“Bottlemania” Book Takes Bottled Water Industry To Task

Arnold Tells Automakers To “Stop Whining” About Tougher California Emissions Standards

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Andy Kondrat:

Department of Energy Forecasts Large Increase In Wind Power Usage

Edward Norton & Gavin Newsom Speak To Congress About Environmental Building Practices

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Jon Popham:

Spencer Tunick Strips Hundreds Naked

Lichtenstein Sculptures At Fairchild Garden In Miami

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Giulia Rozzi:

Does Being Ethical Pay?

Is the Anti-Female Genial Mutilation Campaign Offensive?

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Gina Telaroli:

A Global Look At Media On Pangea Day

Everything Cinema: Brody Takes On the Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard

It’s May 16th, I’m Gina Telaroli and this is TakePart.com’s look at the week in social action…

Speaking of Godard and Richard Brody, Brody will be on hand tonight at New York City’s Film Forum to introduce a 730pm screening of Godard’s La Chinoise. With a hint of red in every frame, La Chinoise dissects idealism and youth with it’s story of a young group that forms a Maoist cell:

I watch that trailer and I think Mao Mao…

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With all the hubbub over it being the 40th anniversary of May 68, one can’t help but think about the French New Wave, and Jean-Luc Godard. And right on schedule New Yorker film critic Richard Brody has a new book out on Godard entitled Everything is Cinema, The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.

Godard always connected the personal to the public in his films, using cinema to express himself and work out issues while still paying tribute to the medium he loved. Brody’s book is about 700 pages long and is thus very detailed in accounts of Godard’s “working life” - I should probably admit now that I’m only on page 251, which gets to me to the time in life when he made Pierrot le fou.

The book works well as a primer for the political and philosophical evolution of both Godard and France and thus how philosophy and politics influenced the films he would make. Brody does a good job of weaving the politics through Godard’s life without losing focus of the fact that when it comes to Godard, “everything is cinema.”

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Here’s a brand new video blog try - please watch and let us know what you think!

May 68 happened 40 years ago…

While we primarily think of France when we think of the time period associated with student protests and a general sense of shaking up old society, events were happening throughout the world. Like the heightened sense of political involvement, cinema was also a source of motivation and inspiration during this time and May 68 was heavily documented by filmmakers everywhere.

GreenCineDaily has a great post up about the different film series that are happening around the world in honor of the 40th anniversary of the events in 1968. Here in New York City:

“New Yorkers can mark the occasion with two rich and wide-ranging programs that aim to capture, on screen, the spirit of that bygone age,” writes AO Scott in the New York Times. “One, at Film Forum (Friday through June 5), is devoted to [Jean-Luc] Godard in the 1960s, when he was at the height of his influence, productivity and creative power. The other, at Lincoln Center (Tuesday through May 14), stretches across geography, time and genre:

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