The Fête de l'Humanité -- festival of humanity -- is an unlikely mix of Burning Man, Woodstock and a political convention.
Credit: NYT
Paris: Christine Marlier was angry when President Emmanuel Macron called a snap election this summer. She's even angrier now that he appointed a right-wing prime minister, despite the fact that a leftist bloc won the most seats in parliament.
But Marlier left that anger behind at home in the far northeast of France when she boarded a bus for a four-hour ride to a nearly 100-year-old festival on the outskirts of Paris that celebrates left-wing politics in general, and French communism in particular.
The Fête de l'Humanité -- festival of humanity -- is an unlikely mix of Burning Man, Woodstock and a political convention.
"We are never angry here," Marlier, 51, said in between doing 1 euro shots of alcohol with her husband, their faces decorated by sparkles.
They were standing in the middle of a dirt lane, between large white booths set up by Communist Party associations from around the country, offering the food specialties of their regions -- including raw oysters and steamed lobsters, giant pans of tartiflette, and axoa, a minced veal dish from the Basque region.
A loudspeaker advertised the coming debate between the head of the French Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, and one of the country's top union leaders, but Marlier and her husband were already tipsy. They were planning on seeing some bands play instead.
"Here, we're in a suspended dream, outside our daily problems and worries," said Marlier, who works with handicapped children in elementary schools in the département of Moselle, bordering Germany and Luxembourg.
Every year, usually during the second weekend of September as the country is shaking off its vacation slumber, the festival's organizers build a huge village out of the mud and grass of an abandoned military airport, in the distant nether regions of Paris where suburban homes give way to corn fields. Up go the stages, and up go some 350 large booths in long lines to make streets, which are often named after dead French communist heroes.
Every year, dozens of musicians come to perform. In the past, they've included acts like Manu Chao, Pink Floyd, Ray Charles and Youssou N'Dour, and French stars like Aya Nakamura and Zaho de Sagazan.
And in all those booths, hundreds of political debates, lectures and Q&A sessions are held throughout the festival's three days. This year there were 360, running morning to evening.
That meant Saturday afternoon, you could see a union leader square off against the head of an employers association; or settle into the large film tent to watch Judith Godrèche's latest short film, "Moi Aussi," on the prevalence of rape; or see a children's play; or dash over to the Angela Davis stage to listen to French musician Santa belt out lyrical songs -- all more or less at the same time.
Or you could try to squeeze into the crowd pouring into the "agora" -- the central red booth where the big-ticket speeches happen -- to see Davis herself. The retired California philosophy professor, activist and communist presidential candidate was back at the festival for the third time since 1973.
"Hope is a discipline which you have to cultivate," she said, her voice reverberating over loudspeakers. "Because without it, there is no possibility of moving forward."
The Fête de l'Huma, as the faithful call it, began in 1930 to raise money for the official Communist Party newspaper, L'Humanité. The left-wing daily is no longer the party's official organ, but it continues to run the festival.
The budget has climbed to about 8 million euros, but the festival barely breaks even most years, said L'Humanité's publisher, Fabien Gay, who also is an elected communist senator.
That's because the newspaper refuses to raise ticket prices, in keeping with the founding idea that the festival should offer culture to workers. The top price for three days of 60 music concerts is just 60 euros -- the typical cost of a single concert in Paris, Gay pointed out.
"This is for us communists, this is what we fight for -- everything that is exceptional and grandiose must remain accessible to everyone," said Roussel, the French Communist Party leader, who spent some of the fete in full-on campaign mode, shaking hands, slapping backs and visiting party booths from across the country, even though no election is near.
During an interview, he fondly remembered 1988, when French designer Yves Saint Laurent put on a fashion show -- which he called a "work of art," comparable to the "Mona Lisa" or "Guernica" by Picasso, who also, incidentally, had exhibitions of his work here.
"Bodies must be always nourished, but so must minds," Roussel said.
When you arrive at the fete, 22 miles south of central Paris, it feels as if you've entered an alternative universe, where the Communist Party is joyfully running France and not continually losing seats in the National Assembly, including Roussel's last summer. The party has just nine seats in the 577-seat legislature.
Here, it's not KFC but CFK: Communist Fried Kitchen, with Colonel Sanders transformed into Karl Marx. Red flags with the hammer and sickle flap from the awnings of booths, and people wear Communist Party shirts and hats.
In 1945, with the memory of the prominent role played by French communists in the Resistance still fresh, some 1 million people crammed into the festival. This year, the attendance was 450,000, according to Gay. While many come just for the music, organizers hope some will drift into a lecture or debate -- particularly those camping in the 8,000 or so tents set up along the fete's flank.
"Millions of French people were communists at one moment of their life, and they come back each year because they feel part of the family," said Frédérick Genevée, a high school history teacher who has written four books on French communist history, the most recent of which he was signing at the festival's book fair. "It's confirmation in what we believe in."
Most of the labor at the festival is done by 10,000 volunteers who arrive in convoys, towing stoves, refrigerators, mattresses and kegs of beer from as far away as Biarritz, 475 miles away.
Over two weeks, they work to build their regional booths, set up kitchens and sleeping quarters, and stay up late to talk. In many families, it's a tradition going back generations.
"It gives us a taste of what the world could be," said Catherine Lavauzelle, 64, a retired teacher who started coming with her father to volunteer at age 7. "If we all gave the best of ourselves and weren't always in competition with one another."
The cheap wine and beer help with the bonding. Add music, and you have a surefire recipe for love, which Genevée said was another festival theme. He met two of his former wives here.
Gregory Moser not only met his wife, Noémie, here; he married her on-site 11 years ago.
"We were married in the Cuba booth, had our wine reception in the People's Republic of China booth," Moser said with a laugh outside the regional booth from Charente, where the couple continue to volunteer. After the wedding ceremony, friends drove the newlyweds around the festival in a golf cart trailing cooking pans.
People often predict the festival's demise. They are always proved wrong.
Similarly, every year, once the revelers have cleared out, and Lavauzelle is bleary-eyed and packing up the sinks and stoves, peeling the tents up off the muddy ground, and beginning the long drive back home, she swears it will be her last. But it never is.
"It's the feeling that draws us back," she said. "It helps me feel better for the rest of the year, when I return to real life."