CNC, Netflix, public support … In an interview with “World”, producer Said Ben Saïd draws up a bitter observation on French cinema, on the eve of a day of action in the profession.
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Faced with the disturbing crisis in the frequentation of cinemas, some three hundred independent professionals in the sector – all trades combined – had signed, on May 17, 2022, a platform in Le Monde expressly putting into question the political choices of the National Center for Cinema and Animated Image (CNC). This text, which was worried about an ideological inflection of the institution, called for the holding of States General of French cinema. A day of gathering of the profession is scheduled, on October 6, at the Institute of the Arab World, in Paris, to push the public authorities to their concrete organization. Meeting with producer Said Ben Saïd (André Téchiné, Paul Verhœven, Nadav Lapid, David Cronenberg …), one of the spearheads of this movement, to better understand the issues.
The report on The financing of French cinema delivered in 2018 by the one who was then the new director of the CNC, Dominique Boutonnat, immediately worried part of the profession. What do you blame him for?
This is a report that does not take into account the singularity of the films by making as if they were all the same and which recommends, in the name of a purely accounting conception of culture, the destruction of public action In terms of cinema.
What has, since then, changed in CNC policy?
Let us first recall that the CNC does not distribute subsidies to cinema professionals but reinjects money from the exploitation of films in French cinema in the form of automatic and selective support. This automatic support is proportional to the commercial success of the film, while selective support is attributed to films with an artistic dimension but not necessarily meeting the criteria of the market. It is this principle of equalization, which has proven itself for decades and that we envy the whole world, which is gradually called into question by objectives of results, profitability and performance.
The Marginalization of cinema for the benefit of audiovisual in the CNC help policy is an important element of your argument.
Dominique Boutonnat would like to merge the cinema support and support devices with those of the audiovisual, starting from the observation that the series have gradually filled the void left by a part of the cinema. The observation is not totally false, but we can no longer partial and biased. The cinema has become, with the disappearance of the studios, which produce only franchises, a crafts producing prototypes: the films of Kelly Reichardt and Bennett Miller in America, those of Hong Sang-Soo, Lee Chang-Dong or Hamaguchi in Asia, Abdellatif Kechiche, Julia Ducournau or Alice Diop in France… The production of series is an industry. It is the reign of quantity. These are two radically different economic and artistic approaches.
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