Paris (AFP)
The management of the Caesar announced Thursday evening his "collective resignation", 15 days from the next annual ceremony, against a background of crisis between denouncing the opacity of the management of the academy and Polanski controversy.
"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 (Academy of Arts and Technology of Cinema) took the unanimous decision to resign ", indicates the Academy chaired since 2003 by producer Alain Terzian.
"This collective resignation will make it possible to proceed to the complete renewal of the direction", continues the César press release.
A general assembly will be held after the 45th ceremony scheduled for February 28 and will be an opportunity to elect "a new directorate to thus prepare, under the aegis of the CNC (National Cinema Center), the modifications to the founding statutes of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema, and implement the announced modernization measures ".
This shock announcement comes after a column published Monday evening in Le Monde, where some 400 personalities including Omar Sy, Bertrand Tavernier, Michel Hazanavicius, Jacques Audiard, Céline Sciamma, Marina Foïs or Agnès Jaoui have called for a "thorough reform" of the Academy of Caesar.
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".
The list of members of the Academy, made up of 4,700 cinema professionals, is 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.
Among them, the director Roman Polanski, targeted by rape charges and at the top of the nominations with his film "J'accuse", which goes very wrong with feminists and public opinion. Associations like Dare feminism! call for a gathering the evening of the ceremony in front of the Salle Pleyel in Paris.
© 2020 AFP