Photo: Courtesy of the French Embassy in Beijing 

The 15th China-France Cultural Festival, the largest foreign cultural festival in China amid the COVID-19 pandemic, is being held from Wednesday to July 31 in 14 cities across China. The festival will include a total of 78 China-France cultural events covering visual art, music, theater, film, dance, fashion and books, according to the French Embassy in Beijing on Tuesday.

"France has become China's largest cultural cooperation partner in institutional cooperation, artist exchanges, and nongovernmental interaction thanks to the past 15-year-long cultural cooperation. The year 2021's festival highlights the cultural ties between China and France, which have bound the two countries together," said Laurent Bili, the French ambassador to China. 

According to the embassy, Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti's sculpture selected by the Louis Vuitton Foundation will be presented to the public in Beijing. China's first special exhibition of Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky will be held in Shanghai. At the exhibition, more than 100 oil paintings, sketches, prints and other works collected by the Centre Pompidou in France will show the creating process of this pioneer of abstract art.

Fashion will be the new element during the 15th China-France Cultural Festival. A fashion evening will be held in Shezhen, South China's Guangdong Province. 

As the largest foreign cultural festival in China amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, artists in China and France will showcase the results of and discuss art cooperation in fields including dance, theater and forums online. Palme d'Or-winning films and the introduction of video works created by French artists will also be broadcast on Chinese TV stations and streaming services. 

Launched in 2006, the China-France Cultural Festival is currently the largest foreign cultural festival held in China and the largest French cultural festival outside of France. In 2019, the number of offline audiences participating in the festival exceeded 2.3 million, and online audiences reached 6.8 million. In 2020, the event was postponed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Global Times