While they must meet with Roselyne Bachelot on Thursday, the organizers of the summer festivals want quick answers concerning the possibility of maintaining their concerts this summer.

For their part, cinemas, theaters, museums and concert halls are preparing their next reopening, but the recovery will not always be easy. 

DECRYPTION

The meeting is eagerly awaited by professionals in the sector.

While the world of culture is still at a standstill due to the coronavirus epidemic, Thursday, the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot must discuss by videoconference with the organizers of summer festivals, while uncertainty reigns always around their maintenance and under what conditions.

For the latter, ready to accept constraints such as reduced gauges, the important thing is to have quick answers in order to be able to organize themselves.

And for their part, theaters, cinemas, museums and concert halls, also awaiting future announcements, are already preparing their reopening. 

What should the minister announce? 

We are moving towards the possibility, for the big summer festivals such as Eurockéennes, Francofolies, Vieilles Charrues or Rock en Seine, to be held but with several conditions.

The first will be that everyone should be seated.

Instead of standing concerts with festival-goers crowded on top of each other, Roselyne Bachelot wants an audience on chairs with reduced gauges, in order to maintain social distancing at all costs.

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Second measure, still depending on the health situation, the mask could be mandatory, including outdoors.

But it is not yet known whether an antigen test will be mandatory for spectators before each concert, and if the bars and refreshments at festivals will be able to open.

But can a festival be held with so many constraints?

Yes, answers Jérôme Tréhorel, the owner of the Vieilles Charrues.

"The objective is that we have the answers quickly so that it is not too late to readjust or reorganize a new event, because going from 70,000 to a few thousand people, it will require a lot of work and reflection. and adaptation ", he asks, however. 

Are theaters and cinemas ready to reopen? 

Still closed for long weeks, theaters and cinemas are also waiting for future announcements.

But will these establishments be ready to reopen their doors if restrictions are eased?

For theaters, it's relatively simple.

The employees are technically unemployed, and most of the troops have continued to rehearse.

For example, La Scala in Paris has four pieces ready, including that of Alexis Michalik, which can therefore be programmed overnight.

Provided, of course, to sell tickets, probably the longest step.

Professionals in the sector therefore ask to be warned sufficiently in advance.

The scenario is the same for museums, which, with gauges and sanitary protocol, can reopen relatively quickly and easily.

Things are more complicated for cinemas, however.

Because if theaters can reopen in a few days, there will be no room for all the films, while hundreds of them are ready to be screened.

“Today, we have roughly twenty films behind schedule,” explains distributor Jean Labadie, who runs Le Pacte.

"I don't have the solution," he continues.

"It depends if theaters reopen in March, April, May. It's extremely difficult to know how we're going to save the films that couldn't be released."

In addition, distributors will also have to deal with the release of behemoths like the next

James Bond

, also awaiting release, and which will take up one screen in five when they arrive in theaters. 

New tools under study 

To better support the future resumption of culture, some companies are thinking about new tools.

At the Philharmonie de Paris, for example, ventilation has been revised, with the help of the company Dassault Systèmes, thanks to a 3D modeling of their large hall. 

"They modeled the air circulation in the room", explains the secretary general of the Philharmonie Hugues De Saint Simon, perched on one of the gilded balconies overlooking this room with its complex architecture: 5 asymmetrical levels and 2,400 seats .

"Each seat has its own ventilation. We were surprised: they recommended that we reduce the air blowing by half. Here, since the volume is already very important, we must rather limit the air circulation".  

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According to this model, the air flows in cascade, to the parterre, then evacuates to the ceiling. He is never, therefore, in front of the spectators or the artists. "Since we lowered the rate of the air conditioning, it goes smoothly down the backs of the musicians. This showed us that also for the musicians, the risk was extremely limited. They are extremely impatient to be able to resume concerts with public ", concludes Hugues De Saint Simon.