Cultural Center Name Change Comes in Time for Festival Start

The Phnom Penh landmark that has been known since the early 1990s as the Centre culturel francais, or French cultural center, is changing its name.

Olivier Planchon, the center’s deputy director and the French Em­­bassy’s cultural attache, an­nounced yesterday that the center will now be called the Institut Francais.

Until recently, names of the 150 French cultural centers around the world had greatly varied. For example, Madagascar’s center was named after the famed French wri­ter Albert Camus, and the Je­ru­sa­lem center after the French-Rus­sian diplomat, pilot and writer, Ro­main Gary. Now, they all will be In­stitut Francais, Mr Planchon said.

Some Cambodians still refer to the institution as the Alliance, since in 1990, it was opened as an Al­li­­ance francaise, a French nongov­­­ernment organization, before be­coming in 1992 a center under the jurisdiction of the French Ministry of Foreign Af­fairs, as it remains today.

Mr Planchon made the an­nouncement during a news conference on the institute’s fifth La­khaon theater festival, which this year will involve more than 250 artists and theater production staff in six plays combining visual arts, music, dance and circus arts.

Held from Sept 10 through Sept 17, the program includes a range of shows, including an adaptation of the 17th-century French classic “The Miser”; a creation entitled “Piano Peanor” with Western and Cambodian music about artists during the 1970s civil war; and the staging of Cambodian traditional tales that will mix actors and paintings in a series of sketches.

When the annual festival was launched in 2007, one of the goals was to stage Cambodia’s diverse forms of theater, and so far, more than 20 forms have been performed, Mr Planchon said. The festival also aspired to become a major regional event with the participation of foreign companies, and the 2012 festival is being planned with this in mind, he said. But this year, the focus will be about French and Cambodian works.

All performances will be presented at the Chenla Theater in Khmer with English and French subtitles.