Hour-long poly documentary on French TV

Vivolta

On November 18th Aurélien wrote from France:

Tonight the French cable channel Vivolta [women's programming] will broadcast a 1-hour documentary about polyamoury. I've seen it (it has 20 minutes on my partner, her boyfriend, and me), and it is a serious explanation -- with quite moving images of an MMF Canadian couple, French author Françoise Simpère, and us three. Hope you can catch it!

The show is titled "Amours plurielles: Le nouvel art d'aimer? (Plural loves: The new art of loving?)." It was co-produced by Televista and Pallas Télévision. I missed it — if Vivolta gets to North America on cable or the web, I can't find it. In France it's scheduled for eight rebroadcasts through December 14th. And here's how to find it in the French-speaking parts of Europe.

Update: Joreth has found it on YouTube; you can now watch the show here.

From the its web page (translated):

Plural loves: The new art of loving?

Today we consider living with several relationships comfortably at once.

Among new trends in partnering, we see couples who live apart, couples with large differences in ages or cultures, blended families, gay couples.... Yet the sad fact is, the divorce rate in France has doubled in the past 30 years to 45%... Adultery remains the prime cause of at-fault divorces... A revolution of mores and hearts (des moeurs et des coeurs) may be getting ready to take shape!

Leaving behind convention, hypocrisy and infidelity, more and more lovers are bypassing traditional ways and reconciling freedom with commitment. Plural lovers (Les amoureux pluriels) get together with one or more other people with the consent of their partners. These new-style couples are part of a movement called polyamory (polyamour).

Polyamory advocates for a new form of partnership more ethical than serial monogamy; polyamorous people, or "polys," say they are more honest and sincere than monos: they don't dump one lover when a new person crosses their path!

This philosophy was previously shared among artists and intellectuals: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre kept separate apartments and each had their own friends and lovers. But today one can find a larger population of the polyamorous, especially in the United States. Since the early 90s the movement has been proclaiming that we should accept that others do not belong to us, should admit that we can love several people at once, refuse to choose between two loves....

Let's have a look at these people who would be more honest, more in tune with modern life. Three women have dared to transgress the imposed model: they've reinvented their relationships in creating their own life stories. Méta lived alternately with her two lovers. Françoise, married through 35 years and two children, has always freely lived her multiple loves. Marie has lived for over 15 years with her husband and another man in her life.

Will the couple of the future be polyamorous?

Read the original (Nov. 18, 2010).

The same triad was featured on French TV a month earlier (Oct. 10, 2010) on the talk show Thé ou Café, wherein Catherine Ceylac interviewed Luc Ferry (philosopher and former French education minister) about his book La révolution de l'amour (The Revolution in Love). Watch that show here or, unofficially, here. Two days later the triad in question sent an open letter to the magazine Rue89 (which had covered poly before), titled "Luc Ferry, you're late for a 'revolution of love'" and challenging his assertion that the three of them won't last together. Read it here (or as forced by Google Translate into machine English here.)

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