Professionals from the cultural sector met on Tuesday during demonstrations in several French cities to protest against the closure of theaters, cinemas and museums.

These cultural places which were prepared to reopen on December 15, will be closed according to Jean Castex until January 7, at least. 

More than a thousand professionals in the world of culture demonstrated on Tuesday against the decision to extend the closure of cultural places due to Covid-19, denouncing the government's "contempt" for them.

At the call of the CGT-spectacle, the demonstrators gathered for several hours on the Place de la Bastille in Paris.

“Let's deconfinate culture!” They chanted in the crowded square.

Ready to reopen on December 15 as hoped for when the second lockdown was announced at the end of October, cinemas, theaters and museums saw their hopes dashed when Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that, in the face of persistent epidemic pressure, they should remain closed until at least January 7.

An appeal to the Council of State launched 

Unions and artists have announced that they are seizing the Council of State via a "freedom referral", an emergency procedure, as catering professionals have been able to do in recent weeks, or the ski sector.

"We are going to die and not even on stage", "The spectacle makes alive", "Art is a weapon of mass construction", "Contempt must remain a film" or "the theater, a place of worship", can we read on the signs.

"What shocks me the most is the double standard with on one side businesses and churches which are reopening and on the other cultural places which are singled out and deprived of a living from their work. C 'is revolting ", explains to AFP Ulysses, intermittent of the spectacle of 28 years.

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The Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, acknowledged on Tuesday that "the world of culture is suffering" but recalled that cultural places were closed "everywhere in Europe" and "on the basis of a number of studies scientists ".

But for Martin, also 27-year-old intermittent, it is "a killing", specifying that "the theater is reluctant to make us work because political decisions are constantly changing".

"Unheard of anger"

"We want to be told when we will be able to reopen because we do not reopen a theater with a snap of the finger. We have been very patient, now all that has to stop", hammered the actor Christophe Alévêque, present in Bastille.

During a rally in Clermont-Ferrand, Rémi Laroere, 32, an employee of the independent cinema Le Rio, denounces the fact that it is "always the same who will benefit from it like Amazon or the streaming platforms".

"In the spring, we played the game: health first. Then during the second confinement we were told that we were not essential, we went on to humiliation. Now we have no prospect" , regrets Jean-Marc Grangier, director of the Comedy.

In Strasbourg, on the Place Kleber, the same concerns among Vincent Welter, from the equestrian circus Equinote, which has only played eight times this year.

For him the cultural sector will "need a year or two to recover".

According to Daniel Muringer, artist musician, there is "incredible anger" after the announcements of Jean Castex, assuring that "people need more than ever, after a terrible year on the psychological level, to find a minimum of sociability, in particular in theaters ".

In an interview with the weekly

Le Point

, the deputy for Culture at the mayor of Paris, Carine Rolland, called for "disembarking culture".