"His height of vision, his smiling lucidity, his class have left an indelible mark" reacted Thursday Gilles Jacob to AFP after the death of his "president and dear accomplice" who "brought to the Festival nobility, moral elegance and sense of the State ”he concludes.
"Its story has crossed history"
"I lived a great passion, and this passion does not leave me", Pierre Viot had confided to AFP during his last Festival in June 2000. Cannes is first and foremost "films and artists", he insisted then before handing over to Gilles Jacob, who had until then been the General Delegate. The former advisor to the Court of Auditors had headed the Center national de la cinématographie (CNC) from 1973 to 1984 for more than ten years, before being elected in 1985 to the presidency of the Cannes Film Festival, replacing Robert Favre Le Bret.
"His story has crossed history: from the Resistance through the ENA to the Cinéfondation, his last functions," his son François Viot told AFP. In Cannes, he was "the legal, economic and moral guarantor of the Festival and at the same time the freedom of mind to Gilles Jacob to bring the festival almost already into the twenty-first century", for his part commented the current president of the Pierre Lescure Festival, saluting a man of "insane modernity".
"Pierre Viot, it goes beyond the Cannes festival"
But “Pierre Viot, it goes beyond the Cannes festival. It's 75 years in the service of culture, ”he added, underlining his“ phenomenal ”work at the CNC where“ he presided over the new dynamic of cinema financing ”. In the 1980s, Pierre Viot, enarque passed through the senior civil service, also chaired the board of directors of the public establishment responsible for building the Opera Bastille.
"It is with affection that I pay tribute to Pierre Viot, one of those who, with an unabashed public commitment, made the history of the Cannes festival", greeted the general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival, Thierry Frémaux.
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