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 relic
     
Location: Hamilton
Gender: Male
weird for sound
 |  |  | makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
< on 9/8/2004 5:31 AM >
|  | | | Spotted this in my usual sampling: I particularly like the cous-cous machine. I don't think I'll be in Paris long enough next week to delve, but what a concept of the hidden city beneath the city. Next trip, I'll have to make time to try to hook up with some specialists. All of a sudden, Delicatessan (the movie) makes a lot more sense.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Guardian/0,4029,1299449,00.html
In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema
Jon Henley in Paris
Wednesday September 8, 2004
The Guardian
Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement.
Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries.
"We have no idea whatsoever," a police spokesman said.
"There were two swastikas painted on the ceiling, but also celtic crosses and several stars of David, so we don't think it's extremists. Some sect or secret society, maybe. There are any number of possibilities."
Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".
There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."
The miles of tunnels and catacombs underlying Paris are essentially former quarries, dating from Roman times, from which much of the stone was dug to build the city.
Today, visitors can take guided tours around a tightly restricted section, Les Catacombes, where the remains of up to six million Parisians were transferred from overcrowded cemeteries in the late 1700s.
But since 1955, for security reasons, it has been an offence to "penetrate into or circulate within" the rest of the network.
There exist, however, several secretive bands of so-called cataphiles, who gain access to the tunnels mainly after dark, through drains and ventilation shafts, and hold what in the popular imagination have become drunken orgies but are, by all accounts, innocent underground picnics.
The recent discovery of three newly enlarged tunnels underneath the capital's high-security La Santé prison was put down to the activities of one such group, and another, iden tifying itself as the Perforating Mexicans, last night told French radio the subterranean cinema was its work.
Patrick Alk, a photographer who has published a book on the urban underground exploration movement and claims to be close to the group, told RTL radio the cavern's discovery was "a shame, but not the end of the world". There were "a dozen more where that one came from," he said.
"You guys have no idea what's down there."
[admin edit: made title more descriptive. -MacG]
[admin edit: fixed link. -Shane]
[last edit 9/13/2004 4:42 AM by Shane - edited 2 times]
The universe may be as grand as they say
but it wouldn't be missed if it didn't exist. |
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Loki0
Location: Kent, UK
Gender: Male
| | Re: Too good to be real
<Reply # 1 on 9/8/2004 8:01 AM >
|  | | | Seems a bit odd that a cinema carved from rock presumably attended by many people has never been noticed? It's a nice idea though, a secret underground world like that. I thought this comment 'There were "a dozen more where that one came from," he said.' wasn't too clever if they want to maintain any kind of secrecy. It does read a little like part of a book though.
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Social Engineer
Location: Denver
| | Makeshift Cinema found in Paris Catacombs
<Reply # 2 on 9/8/2004 11:52 AM >
|  | | | I hope this hasn't been posted already. I didn't see it anywhere. French police on a training mission stumbled upon a makeshift Cinema, complete with amphitheater seating, a bar, and three phone lines, while in the Paris Catacombs.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Guardian/0,4029,1299449,00.html
Vlad. Vladder. Vladdest. |
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Chronic
Very Noble Donor
Location: Kitchener, ON
Gender: Male
Architecture has only two enemies. Water and stupid men.
| | Re: Makeshift Cinema found in Paris Catacombs
<Reply # 3 on 9/8/2004 12:08 PM >
| | | | 3 posts below this one
http://www.uer.ca/forum_showthread.asp?fid=1&threadid=12845
01:14:16] <Chronic> Conrad...ya gotta go....
[01:14:30] <nightbird> yes Mr. Black, life is funnier than a pocket full of stocks! And...Tim has legal friends in Chicago...we'll get thru this!!! |
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MatC
Nobler Donor
Location: ENY
Gender: Male
Accepted everywhere
| | | Re: Too good to be real
<Reply # 4 on 9/8/2004 12:11 PM >
| | | | It seems like it would be extremely easy to "find them" -- just follow up on the electric and phone bills and see who's paying them or who had them installed or whatever.
Did they really think the police would find that note and say, "oh, we won't go looking for these nice folks, but only because they told us not to."
-- Mat
"We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."
- T.S. Eliot, excerpt from "Little Gidding" |
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rev_skarekroe
Location: Atlanta, GA
Gender: Male
| | | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 5 on 9/8/2004 2:30 PM >
| | | | No pictures?
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siologen
Location: Melbourne, Australia.
I Go Where The Drains Are
| | | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 6 on 9/8/2004 3:32 PM >
| | | | Its Zone Tours HQ. I phoned Lezard when i was in paris and he took me down there. It was amazing... Fuckin shame its been found. Some of them lived down there.
S///
[admin edit: made title more descriptive. -MacG]
[/quote]
Big Drayyynes!
http://siologen.livejournal.com Blog |
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EatsTooMuchJam
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Gender: Male
Squirty "Stickybuns" von Cherrypants
| |  |  |  | | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 7 on 9/8/2004 3:58 PM >
| | | | Posted by MatC
It seems like it would be extremely easy to "find them" -- just follow up on the electric and phone bills and see who's paying them or who had them installed or whatever.
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If I had to guess I'd say they spliced into the lines unofficially and were not paying for service.
"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
-Tom Waits |
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Skaught
Location: Calgary
Gender: Male
| | | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 8 on 9/9/2004 7:18 AM >
| | | | I know someone who did that once (nudge nudge)
http://uea.ca/drains/files/reduxzero-minibar.jpg
Let is be said, I would not do it again.
Reduxzero fudged the exact details a bit for the comic but it was not far off.
I never did get my cord back.
[last edit 9/9/2004 7:19 AM by Skaught - edited 1 times]
If you ever come to Calgary then email [email protected] and you'll be made welcome, taken to locations and given free accommodation. We'll help save you the $$$ you spend on the flight over here :) |
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LeeHarvey
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Gender: Male
| | | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 9 on 9/13/2004 1:50 PM >
| | | | First thing I thought about when I heard about this story was this forum.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more conversation about it.
'Too good to be true'? What's the story? Did this thing exist or what?
something has happened to beauty |
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SteamPunk
Location: Sailing the seas of sleaze.
| | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 10 on 9/13/2004 5:03 PM >
|  | | | Nice article , I started to drool, not 'cause of the cous-cous either. If only.......ahhhh....
I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too! |
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Mercury
Location: Las Vegas
| | | Paris's new slant on underground movies... EU and cinema
<Reply # 11 on 9/14/2004 8:12 PM >
| | | | "There are, at most, 15 of them. Their ages range from 19 to 42, their professions from nurse to window dresser, mason to film director. And in a cave beneath the streets of Paris, they built a subterranean cinema whose discovery this week sent the city's police into a frenzy."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1302249,00.html
[last edit 9/14/2004 8:13 PM by Mercury - edited 1 times]
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sympathy in chaos
Location: Chicago
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 12 on 9/14/2004 11:23 PM >
| | | | That's it...I'm moving to Paris. After I figure out how not to be taken for a ride by the axi drivers?
"But I didn't want the paid tour, I just wanted to get to the hostel"
[last edit 9/14/2004 11:25 PM by sympathy in chaos - edited 1 times]
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MatC
Nobler Donor
Location: ENY
Gender: Male
Accepted everywhere
| | | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 13 on 9/14/2004 11:37 PM >
| | | |
Holy crap, this article is amazing. I mean, some cities here in North America seem to have a fairly advanced underground culture, but to have a group in Paris that spends their weekends shoring up walls in underground caverns, shunting electricity away from an official power grid, and figuring out how to get the makings for a freakin' underground movie theater in through a 30cm x 40cm hole... all without the cops having the slightest idea what you're doing until tipped off by a disgruntled former member... wow, that's some crazy subterranean subterfuge going on there.
The funniest thing, though, is that the police can't charge them with much of anything. In America they would be tracking these people with satellites and seeking them through sealed search warrants and deporting them straight to Guantanamo Bay. But in France, the police stand around with cigarettes in their hands saying, "eh, vhat are we going to do? *takes a drag* Eeet's all very complicated."
Now, who has the better outlook on "crime"? 
P.S. -- Please note that if these people had actually done something substantially wrong that I would feel differently. Right now I just think they're extremely cool.
-- Mat
"We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."
- T.S. Eliot, excerpt from "Little Gidding" |
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sympathy in chaos
Location: Chicago
Gender: Male
| | | | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 14 on 9/16/2004 2:52 AM >
| | | | "La Mexicaine de la Perforation"
The perforating mexicans?
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abandonedmuse69
Account closed as requested.
| | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 15 on 9/16/2004 3:10 PM >
| | | | why do cops always ruin a good thing...damn! sounds like those guys put alot of effort and love into their little bar and movie theater and the cops came and messed it all up...now everyone is going to know about it...what a bunch of bastards..
now i hate parisian cops as well
I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.
--Pablo Picasso
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SubCon
Location: New York, NY
Gender: Male
| | Re: makeshift cinema found in Paris catacombs (was: Too good to be real)
<Reply # 16 on 9/20/2004 12:57 PM >
| | | | This is a great story - I tip my hat to these folks. I first heard about this story on NPR, they've got some excellent french police quotes.
http://www.npr.org...e.php?wfId=3925259
Its got an interesting anti-consumerism spin to it...
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