The Césars: lack of democracy, cooptation ... the world of cinema is stepping up

It's not just in Hollywood that the film industry is questioning itself. In France, the crisis is raging on the Cesars, already weakened by the Polanski controversy: In a column published Monday, February 11, nearly 400 personalities from French cinema including Omar Sy, Bertrand Tavernier, Michel Hazanavicius, Jacques Audiard, Céline Sciamma, Marina Foïs or Agnès Jaoui called for a "thorough reform" of the Academy of the Cesars.

Among their main criticisms, "dysfunctions", an "opacity of the accounts" or the statutes which "have not evolved for a very long time" and are still based on "cooptation". They also complain that the members of the Academy of Caesar have "no voice in the chapter, nor in the operations" of the Academy and the structure that governs it, the Association for the Promotion of Cinema (APC) , "nor during the ceremony".

"It may seem a little anecdotal, but it is a bit our window in fact", underlined, Tuesday evening, on BFMTV the director Michel Hazanavicius.

For Michel Hazanavicius, the 4,700 members of the Académie des César "are not democratically represented" pic.twitter.com/sY0MxUg8fo

Taking note of these criticisms, the board of directors of the Academy of the Cesars indicated that it was going to seize the CNC "in order to appoint a mediator in charge of a deep reform of the statutes and the governance of the Academy" .

A deep crisis

He also called for "appeasement", while the Caesars are also shaken this year by the controversy over Roman Polanski, targeted by rape charges and topped the nominations for the ceremony of February 28 with "J'accuse" , arousing the indignation of a part of public opinion and of feminists.

The crisis is deep in this institution, created in 1975 by the journalist and producer Georges Cravenne and chaired since 2003 by the producer Alain Terzian. The list of members of the Academy, made up of 4,700 film 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.

It is overseen by a board of directors 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.

But, regrets the tribune, "the statutes do not allow a new member of the association to be elected by all of the 4,700 members".

The first signs of the crisis appeared in mid-January, at the dinner of the candidates for the César nominations for the best hope. The Society of Film Directors (SRF) was indignant that the Academy refused two godmothers for hopes, the novelist Virginie Despentes and the director Claire Denis. She had denounced "opaque and discriminatory acts unworthy", supported by several directors and actors.

Insufficient reforms

The Academy of Caesar had then apologized and promised reform. Its president Alain Terzian had announced an "essential modernization", through the establishment of parity.

Sunday, he had clarified these promises in the Sunday Journal, announcing measures to establish parity within the college of voters (35% women), on the board of directors (28.5% women ) and APC (17% women).

"Insufficient" in the eyes of the petitioners. They considered that "it would again be a system of cooptation, a vestige of an era that we would like to be over, that of an elitist and closed system". "Why can't the 4,700 members of the Academy vote to elect their representatives as is the case at the Oscars, at the Baftas"?, They ask themselves.

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 while they have produced nothing for these same 30 years. Besides being illegitimate, they prevent renewal https://t.co/OEi5qiNlTB

"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," lambasted producer Vincent Maraval on Twitter. "Besides being illegitimate, they prevent renewal."

With AFP

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