INTERVIEW
The 45th Cesar ceremony will take place on Friday evening in a tense context. Events are planned at 6 p.m. Place des Ternes in Paris, not far from the Salle Pleyel where the ceremony takes place, to contest the twelve nominations of Roman Polanski's J'accuse . The Franco-Polish director, accused of rape by twelve women, finally decided not to participate in the Cesars. Laurence Lascary, producer and co-president of the 50/50 collective, hopes on Europe 1 Friday, "a beautiful ceremony with strong words" and "a real collective awareness".
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"It is a perhaps historic moment which we are witnessing, the shock of two worlds. And I hope for a new era which is announced this evening", underlines the producer. She also supported the associations behind the call to demonstrate as "Dare feminism!" and "We All", believing that they were "in their role to challenge by saying 'is it normal that the film J'accuse had twelve nominations?'"
"I really hope that this is the place for a real collective awareness"
Speeches related to the controversy are planned. Florence Foresti, mistress of ceremonies for the second time, would have carte blanche. "She said several times that she was not going to have her texts reread," notes Laurence Lascary. "I really hope that this is the place for a real collective awareness for a vision of what the cinema industry should be in France tomorrow," she adds.
As for Roman Polanski's decision not to attend the ceremony, the producer agrees, saying that, if he had come, "he would have catalyzed all the attention and he would still have positioned himself as a victim". She sees the director as "a survivor of this ancient world where the director was sacred and where we did not dare to demand justice". The 50/50 collective is now keen to find solutions to "prevent an actress or a technician from being harassed on a set".
Besides the Polanski affair, the Caesars are also weakened by an internal crisis. In February, a tribune signed by 400 personalities from the cinema demanded an "in-depth" reform of their functioning. An observation shared by Laurence Lascary who denounces "social reproduction and a subjectivity which does not say her name" in French cinema. This sling had led, in mid-February, to the resignation en bloc of its board of directors, chaired since 2003 by Alain Terzian.