Paris (AFP)

No "happy end" for 2020: all set to reopen on December 15, cinemas, theaters and museums are enraged at no longer having a precise prospect of reopening before January 7, at least.

The cultural sector, whose theaters have been closed since the end of October, has only one certainty: no reopening is to be expected before this date.

Faced with the virus and an epidemic "which lasts longer than one would have liked", there was no question of increasing "the flows, the concentrations, the mixing of the public", hammered the Prime Minister Jean Castex .

Nor to take the risk of seeing the health situation worsen in January and shift "the prospects for a return to normal by as much."

The President of the Republic had mentioned at the end of November a possible reopening of cultural places on December 15, but only if the health situation permitted.

A condition which had not prevented artists and theater operators from making every effort to reopen on this date.

Aware of the coming anger of the world of culture, which has already felt several times forgotten by the public authorities since the start of the pandemic, the Prime Minister said he knew "how difficult these decisions are to accept".

And promised to continue its economic support.

“Making this decision (...) was particularly painful for us, believe it,” he added: “I know how much the cultural sector had prepared itself, which the artists have repeated, that all sectors were mobilized, everything was ready for the curtains to rise and the screens to light up ".

- Consternation and incomprehension -

Words that were not enough to appease: "culture is therefore once again sacrificed", lamented cellist Gautier Capuçon on social networks, summarizing a feeling spread from large museums to cinemas and theaters.

"How many artists will not survive? How many actors in the cultural ecosystem will definitely not recover? How many young people will give up their dream?", He added.

On the ground, "it's a disaster!", Illustrates Arnaud Vialle, owner of the Rex cinema in Sarlat, all set to reopen with a Christmas tree and sessions reserved for children from schools in this Dordogne town, before the holidays.

"I am devastated for the spectators, who needed to have joy in their hearts to get out of this doldrums", he adds, "without counting the distributors and the producers who invested to release their films".

"We are dismayed and revolted," added the general delegate of the National Federation of French cinemas, Marc-Olivier Sebbag, who cried double standards.

"We leave open without change except the curfew of places that have favored mixing and possible contamination such as shops and transport, without social distancing," he points out.

"On the other hand, those who have hyper-strict protocols we do not open them when there is no risk. It is incomprehensible, it is an immense injustice", he indignantly, promising to "mobilize the entire cultural sector" and examine "all avenues of appeal".

Because the confusion is the same everywhere: "no consultation has been conducted with us", laments Nicolas Dubourg, president of the National Union of artistic and cultural enterprises (Syndeac) which brings together 400 national stages and subsidized drama centers.

He does not "understand" this decision either.

At the Théâtre de Chaillot, the director Didier Deschamps, who received the decor for Angelin Preljocaj's next ballet that very morning, expressed his "immense disappointment".

"The political class in general would gain a lot from frequenting places of culture. They might measure that we are as vital as the local business, or the possibility of going to mass," he says.

© 2020 AFP