Thessaloniki’s audience enjoyed Jane Birkin’s sensitive performance in a unique concert given in “Aristotelion” cinema theatre on Monday, November 16.
The concert was attended by a large audience, including TIFF’s president George Corraface and director Despina Mouzaki.
Rendering groundbreaking favorite songs, such as “Ex-far des sixties” and “Je t’ aime ... moi non plus”, interspersed with narratives from her own life, the performer held the audience spellbound for a whole two hours. “It fills me with great joy when people like the songs I write. I am said to be a mysterious person. I’m nothing but a very ordinary person, writing about ordinary people and ordinary things,” Jane Birkin said, before performing a song for an unusual –as she characterized him- person, musician and longtime partner Serge Gainsbourg.
Jane Birkin took the opportunity to thank the 50th TIFF and its president George Corraface and director Despina Mouzaki. An intense emotional highlight came when Birkin dedicated a song to politician, activist and Nobel Peace Prize holder Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains imprisoned in her homeland, Burma. Jane Birkin’s words were: “On your way in the cinema theatre tonight you might have noticed the portrait of a woman named Aung San Suu Kyi. Aung San Suu Kyi has been imprisoned in Burma for the past 20 years. Her husband died, and her children haven’t seen her for 18 years. I read a piece somewhere about her and thought that she was destined to die before I have had the chance to do anything to help her. So, I wrote a song for her, which I perform every single night. However, the situation is getting worse in Burma. This is the reason why I shall never stop singing this song until things change over there.”
