Sino-Frenco cultural exchange highlights in 2017

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Sino-Frenco relations are entering a new stage with French president Emmanuel Macron's visit to China, and cultural exchanges can be very helpful in boosting the ties.

Here's a look at some of the most important bilateral cultural events from 2017.

For 12 years, the French culture festival dubbed "Festival Croisements" has been bringing a delectable feast of arts and performing arts to China ranging from classical to the contemporary. The year 2017 saw more than 60 programs being staged in 30 cities across the country.

2017 is the festival's 12th year, the end and the beginning of a cycle in the Chinese zodiac.

The festival saw French actress Isabelle Huppert appearing at the Shanghai International Film Festival, joining Chinese director Jia Zhangke for a panel discussion.

Later, she also stopped in Beijing for an intimate reading of Marguerite Dura’s "The Lover" for the Chinese audience.

French actress Isabelle Huppert at Shanghai Int’l Film Festival. /CGTN Photo

Meanwhile in the art community, Exhibition High Tension, eight winners of the Marcel Duchamp Prize was unveiled at the Red Brick Art Museum in May.

Its curator and honorary director of the Centre Pompidou, the French National museum of Modern Art, Alfred Pacquement, talked about how Chinese and French contemporary artists have inspired each other.

In November, an exhibition honoring the late French diplomat, Paul Jean-Ortiz, was held at Beijing's Millennium Monument Museum.

Jean-Ortiz was a great promoter of cultural exchanges between France and China in his career spanning three decades.

An exhibition at the same museum is currently celebrating the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

From oil paintings to sketch and print, the exhibit consists of 70 artworks from Ingres Museum in the painter's hometown Montauban in southern France and cast a light on the originality Ingres brought to classical art.

And on New Year's Eve, Pierre Cardin's seventieth anniversary show took place at Beijing's 798 Art Zone.

The French fashion label is the first international brand to enter China. When its founder and designer Pierre Cardin came to the country in the 1980s, he brought fashion to homogeneity.

The 70th anniversary fashion show was centered around the ballet "Marco Polo," a fascinating tale narrated by an equally riveting array of costumes.