Jacques Rupnik, a Senior Research Fellow at Sciences-Po and Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard will discuss the perceptions, responses and dividing lines regarding EU's neighborhood policy with its East and South neighborhoods.

Pierre Anctil, a History professor at the University of Ottawa, will discuss "New Identities of the French Language in Montreal".

"La religion est-elle un obstacle à l'intégration?": Patrick Simon, a socio-demographer who is the Director of Research at the Institut National d'études Démographiques (INED) in the "International migration and minorities" research unit and also a research associate at the Center for European Studies of Sciences Po, will discuss the potential obstacle of religion for the integration of Muslim communities in France.

Presented in three Boston-area venues, vocal ensemble Blue Heron offer an evening of 14th-century songs about Hope. Dive into musical history and discover some creations by French poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut (b. around 1300 in Reims), one of the features of the program.

Set in 1913 Paris in the last moments before the glittering City of Light would be overshadowed by war, Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár’s classic operetta The Merry Widow draws us into the opulent Paris of the legendary restaurant Maxim’s in this first-ever BLO production.

Described by the L.A. Times as “one of the most unique and brilliant acoustic guitar veterans in the world music scene today”, Pierre Bensusan's name became synonymous with contemporary acoustic guitar genius, long before the terms New Age, New Acoustic Music or World Music were invented. A composer and singer, he recorded his first album when he was 17 and toured the US for the first time in 1979.

Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov’s new film, nominated for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is a rich and unusual meditation on the Louvre Museum in Paris and the preservation of European culture during the destructive climate of World War Two.

The Independent Film Festival Boston features French director Alice Winocour's Maryland (Disorder, 2015), a masterful thriller full of suspense in which a Special Services soldier turned security guard for a wealthy Lebanese businessman and his family (Matthias Schoenaerts, Far from the Madding Crowd) is dealing with post-traumatic stress syndroms.

“Visiting Masterpieces: Pairing Picasso” offers a unique opportunity to study the artist’s range of techniques and styles, with themes including the stylistic transformation of the human figure, variation of a single subject across works, and emulation of revered artistic forebears.

Photo: Head of a Woman, Portrait of Marie Thérèse Walter (1934. Oil on canvas. Isabelle and Scott Black Collection)

Albertine, the French Embassy’s reading room and bookshop in New York, is now offering a selection of high quality French language ebooks via its website. The vast majority of these ebooks are available in the U.S. for the first time.