The seventh art: Why France shines on the silver screen • FRANCE 24 English

The seventh art: Why France shines on the silver screen • FRANCE 24 English

[Music] it’s time now for French Connections our weekly look at the intricacies of life here in France with Florence Vilman hi Flo hey Genie this week we’re going to focus on the world of French cinema which is known here as the settiar the seventh art there’s a real love and pride of movies in France which of course is after all the birthplace of cinema absolutely the first commercial screening happened here in Paris on December 28th 1895 and 130 years later well the silver screen is still booming with over 5,000 movie theaters across the country France is by far Europe’s biggest cinema buff here in Paris alone it has the highest density of cinemas in the world and as you can imagine if there are this many movie theaters it must be because French people love going to movies and it’s true uh that they absolutely love going to the cinema which might be surprising given the rise of online streaming etc but many French people are purists and say that movies are made to be seen on the screen now the French don’t just love to watch films they love to make films and French cinema of course is so widely respected around the world and if the film industry here is so strong it’s due in part to the protection that’s given to French cinema by the French government cinema is the crown jewel of something that’s known as the cultural exception uh here in France which sounds really pompous but it’s actually a state policy that was put in place in the 1950s now the underlying idea isn’t that French culture is superior but it is that French culture is exceptional and it shouldn’t be treated like any other commodity you know at the mercy of supply and demand demand and so what this means for the cinema uh business is that uh it’s all about defending the art that is French cinema against the steamroller of free market capitalism and especially the dominance of America and Hollywood right and there’s actually a state agency here in France whose only purpose is the production and promotion of French film it’s our acronym duour it’s the very prominent CNC uh which stands for the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image it’s an agency that’s part of the Ministry of Culture and the CNC uh basically has a honeypot of money that it distributes to all sorts of film related things so that can be building cinemas but also financing uh uh movies but also TV shows animations etc it has a lot of money it has about €780 million euros at its disposal and this money comes from a variety of taxes including a levy on cinema tickets let’s take a look for each uh cinema ticket uh that you buy 10.72% of the price goes to the CNC so if your cinema ticket for instance costs €10 and it increasingly does cost €10 well over a euro will go to financing a French film so if you see a Hollywood blockbuster well you might actually be helping to finance a an art house smaller budget French film that probably wouldn’t have been made otherwise it’s such a great policy and Flo you mentioned the price of French cinema and as much as people do love going to the movies here the number of cinema guards has been dropping in part due to the rising prices well there’s been so much inflation that a lot of people have basically had to slash non-necessary expenses like going out although some might say that is necessary but also the price of going to the movies is more and more expensive and if you go out with your family for instance it it costs a lot of money and so you know for the price of a ticket you could sign up to a streaming platform uh and so uh to you know try and get people to come to the cinema uh movie theaters will actually offer deals and discounts for various people and then at the end of uh the month of June and the beginning of July there is a celebration of French cinema it’s called the fedu cinema uh and over a 4-day period the price of tickets drops to€5 and cinema fans are thrilled I remember being blureyed at the end of the fedu cinema because you get to see a large number of films in just a few days Now usually in French Connections we end on a lighter note but it is important to talk about a very serious issue related to French cinema and that’s the Me Too movement here in France now Me Too quickly toppled several powerful men in Hollywood after it first started in 2017 but its impact in France has been slower until now it seems the Me Too movement was met with a lot of resistance here in France and some might say especially in the cinema world and this kind of fed criticism that the cinema france is elitist and out of touch with reality i can’t go into all the details but there is an a striking example of this and that was in 2019 when Roman Palansky won best director at the Sizah Awards which is kind of the equivalent of the Oscars here now remember the Polish French director has been wanted in the United States for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old since the 1970s and yet here he was getting the top award at the CIA so during that c ceremony an an actress known as uh Adel Enel she famously stormed out of the of the ceremony shouting shame uh and six years later you can see her there she actually uh won a landmark court case against a director who was convicted of sexually assaulting her when she was a minor so it seems like between the ceremony and this uh landmark court case there has been change and also there is a growing movement um that’s been led for instance by another actress uh Judith Gutsh uh she’s been on a campaign to expose abuse in the world of cinema and there have been more and more uh people who have been toppled or affected by this for instance recently the French actor de was found guilty of sexual assault and given a suspended sentence so little by little it does seem like m me too is starting to have more of an effect here in France and some might say it’s about time all right Flo thank you so much for that filmano there with your latest French connections don’t forget if you want to check out any of the French connections that Flo’s has done over the months and years you can always do that on our website the address is france 24.com

France is the birthplace of cinema. Some 130 years later, the love of the silver screen is still very strong. The state has set up a special system to promote, protect and finance French films. Thanks to this system, France releases a large number of quality films that wouldn’t otherwise be made, enabling them to compete with Hollywood. Join us as we take a deep dive into le cinéma français.
#Frenchcinema #culturalexception #MeToo

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