French cinema director Jean-Jacques Beineix, whose films include Diva, The Moon in the Gutter and Betty Blue, died on Friday in Paris after a long illness at the age of 75.
French cinemas are due to re-open next week after lockdown measures last October blanked out screens across the country, but along with strict regulations that will limit their seating capacity to a third of the normal they must also juggle with presenting dozens of films that have queued up for release.
Amid calls by several particpants for France's locked-down cinemas and theatres to reopen, French actress Corinne Masiero stripped naked on stage at France's yearly César film awards ceremony with a message of protest for French PM Jean Casteix on her bared back which read 'Give us back art, Jean', phonetically also meaning 'Give us our money back'.
After being forced to close their establishments during the lockdown, theatre and cinema operators in the Île-de-France region and eight major cities now have to deal with the introduction on Saturday of a curfew from 9 pm, for at least four weeks.
Casinos will welcome gamblers from Monday while stadiums and racetracks will reopen on July 11, subject to a limit of 5,000 people, the government announced late on Friday.
One of the side effects of the coronavirus pandemic has been a shake-up in the world of culture, including in France. As cinemas have stayed closed and music festival and tours have been cancelled, online streaming has stepped in to satisfy consumer demand for new film releases and live performances. Critics fear that not only is the culture industry rapidly becoming concentrated into the hands of a few major global players, there is also a risk that the dominance of online in films and music will reduce cultural diversity for many people – especially the poorest. Mickaël Correia reports.
French culture minister Françoise Nyssen has announced that film productions with a minimum of four women in key professional roles will be eligible to greater financial subsidies than others, in a drive to reach greater gender parity in the industry.
All of all of the Cannes Film Festival's female jury members, including its leader Cate Blanchett, along with many women actors, directors and producers held a protest on the red-carpeted entrance to the festival's Palis des festivals on Saturday to call for gender parity in the cinema industry, underling that Cannes had since its beginnings awarded 71 male directors with the coveted Golden Palm prize, but has given the honour to just two female directors.
Feminist groups have called for a boycott of the annual César awards ceremony in February over what one said was the 'shameful' decision to honour filmmaker Roman Polanski, 83, who is wanted in the US on charges of raping a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles in 1977.
A new law due to be announced early February will replace 2003 legislation by which people under the age of 18 are automatically barred from seeing films 'with non-simulated sex scenes and extreme violence' in French cinemas.
Frédérique Dumas, head of Orange Studio, the film production arm of French telecoms giant Orange and which has co-produced several major box office hits including The Artist, was called upon to abandon the funding of a biopic about the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent in order to protect the private interests of Orange CEO Stéphane Richard, according to documents obtained by Mediapart. The move was aimed as a favour for Pierre Bergé, a major shareholder of French daily Le Monde and president of its supervisory board, whose paper was at the time publishing an unflattering series of articles about Richard’s implication in a high-profile judicial investigation into suspected fraud. Dumas, who refused to abandon the coproduction project, has since lost her job. Michaël Hajdenberg reports.
Actionnaires directs et indirects : Société pour l’Indépendance de Mediapart, Fonds pour une Presse Libre, Association pour le droit de savoir
Rédaction et administration : 127 avenue Ledru-Rollin, 75011 Paris
Courriel : contact@mediapart.fr
Téléphone : + 33 (0) 1 44 68 99 08
Propriétaire, éditeur, imprimeur : Société Editrice de Mediapart
Abonnement : pour toute information, question ou conseil, le service abonnés de Mediapart peut être contacté par courriel à l’adresse : serviceabonnement@mediapart.fr ou par courrier à l'adresse : Service abonnés Mediapart, 11 place Charles de Gaulle 86000 Poitiers. Vous pouvez également adresser vos courriers à Société Editrice de Mediapart, 127 avenue Ledru-Rollin, 75011 Paris.
