Paris (AFP)

Weakened by the Polanski controversy and contested for its opaque management, the management of the Académie des César, which rewards the best French films of the year, announced its resignation en bloc fifteen days before its annual ceremony.

"To honor those who made cinema in 2019, to regain serenity and make the cinema festival a celebration, the board of directors of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema made the decision at unanimously to resign, "said Thursday evening the Academy chaired since 2003 by producer Alain Terzian.

"This collective resignation will allow the complete renewal of the management", composed of the founding members, former presidents or members of the Association, 21 people in total, including the filmmakers Costa Gavras, Claude Lelouch or Tonie Marshall.

The Minister of Culture stressed that the new management should "allow to represent French cinema in all its aesthetics and diversity". "Its governance must be guided by democratic functioning and the requirements of openness, transparency, parity and diversity," added Franck Riester on Twitter.

A general assembly will be held after the ceremony on February 28 and will be an opportunity to elect a new directorate to prepare the modifications of the founding statutes under the aegis of the National Cinema Center (CNC) and to implement modernization measures. '' an institution judged by many to be outdated, with too little representation of women in particular.

- Cooptation -

The crisis has been brewing for months and took on a new scale on Monday: in Le Monde, some 400 personalities including Omar Sy, Bertrand Tavernier, Jacques Audiard, Céline Sciamma, Marina Foïs and Agnès Jaoui called for "in-depth reform".

Among their grievances, "dysfunctions", an "opacity of the accounts" or the statutes which "have not changed for a very long time" and are still based on "cooptation".

"It may seem a bit anecdotal, but it is a bit our window in fact," said director Michel Hazanavicius ("The Artist"), one of the signers, on Tuesday.

"A handful of men pose a problem in French cinema by co-opting each other for 30 years at the head of all the commissions, all the organizations", summarized on his side on Twitter the producer Vincent Maraval.

The crisis is deep in the institution created in 1975 by the journalist and producer Georges Cravenne. The list of members of the Academy, made up of 4,700 cinema professionals, is indeed confidential. To be part of it, you must have at least two sponsorships and have participated in at least three feature films in five years.

The Academy is itself governed by the CPA, whose members are the professionals having received an Oscar, the former presidents and several personalities, that is to say 47 members. She is herself overseen by the board of directors who announced her resignation Thursday evening.

- Parity -

To cope with the crisis, Alain Terzian, who seemed hitherto unboltable, had announced measures to establish parity within the college of voters (35% women currently), the board of directors (28.5 % women) and APC (17% women).

"Insufficient" in the eyes of the signatories of the petition, after revelations on cases of rape and sexual assault in the world of French cinema, including that of actress Adèle Haenel.

In this context, the presence of Roman Polanski, targeted by rape charges, within the APC, as well as his 12 appointments to the César with "J'accuse", on the Dreyfus affair, go very poorly with part of public opinion and feminist associations.

"To celebrate an aggressor like Polanski is to support the system of impunity for male violence, and to muzzle the words of the victims," ​​write feminist associations. Some like Dare feminism! call for a gathering the evening of the ceremony in front of the Salle Pleyel in Paris.

The Franco-Polish director will be "a priori" at the ceremony. "There is no reason why he should not come," said producer of "J'accuse" Alain Goldman in Le Point this week, saying that "supporting Polanski is not supporting rape".

© 2020 AFP