Organising the counter-offensive !

Liberal policies, accompanied today by a strictly ideological vision of culture conveyed by the extreme right, to which a good part of the political spectrum now refers, are endangering documentary cinema. Its power of expression and its ability to represent reality are undoubtedly not to blame.

These attacks are taking place in a climate where profitability and the conditioning of the media encourage uniformity, and where the relays of popular education are lacking or are marginalised, pushing our films into an entrenched territory, perceived by some as an entre-soi, far removed from the expectations of the public. It is then easy to associate us, like the whole of the cultural field, with an elite that profits from state funds: an enemy to be destroyed. And so we see that it is now politically expedient to attack culture.

And yet the cinema we produce and make is first and foremost an art driven by and towards encounters with others, and moreover in a craft-based production mode that affirms a certain relationship with the land, with people, with links.

We have never stopped fighting and resisting to build and protect an independent creative space, free from the rules of the market alone. We are defending absolute creative freedom to perpetuate the axiom attributed to Rosselini: ‘Film what is, so that one day we may know what was’.

The results of the recent elections and the ensuing consequences, which have left the field wide open to authoritarian and reactionary modes of governance, force us to react. How can we commit ourselves artistically to imagining stories that can counter this inexorable advance of the most reactionary ideas? How can we continue to fight to preserve the very existence of our practices, whose funding and support may soon be called into question?

Everywhere, in all the professional associations, a process of reflection is being launched, often based on an observation of powerlessness in the face of what lies ahead. It’s time to get together and think about how we can save documentary filmmaking, and how we can turn it into a powerful tool in the fight to mount a consistent counter-offensive that is equal to the peril we face.

At the Public Forum, men and women from civil society, intellectuals and professionals will come together to bear witness to the blows that have been dealt to them, but also, and above all, to the many actions that are springing up here and there. This will be an opportunity to bring them together and multiply them, to initiate an uprising in the cultural community, the only response capable of promising us a desirable future!

The Forum will be moderated by Régis Sauder and Carine Chichkowsky, co-president and co-chairwoman of the Association des Amis du Cinéma du Réel, and Judith Bernard, journalist and director of the Hors-série website.

SPEAKERS

FIRST PART

• Marianne K. Roméo, producer (Petit à Petit Productions)
• Christophe Cognet, filmmaker
— members of Amis du Cinéma du Réel association

• Audrey Ferrarese, Le Repli by Joseph Paris’ producer (Drôle de Trame)
• Emmanuel Gibouleau, cinema exhibitor and programmer, Le Cinématographe, Nantes
• François-Xavier Drouet, filmmaker

DEUXIEME PARTIE

• Johann Chapoutot, historian, professor, Sorbonne Université
— Les Irresponsables (Gallimard, coll. “NRF Essai”, 2025), Le Monde Nazi (co-écrit avec Chritian Ingrao et Nicolas Patin, Taillandier, 2024), Libres d’obéir (Gallimard, coll. “NRF Essai”, 2020), etc.
• Nathalie Quintane, writer, poet
— Tout va bien se passer (P.O. L., 2023), Un Hamster à l’école (La Fabrique, 2021), Les Enfants vont bien (P.O.L., 2019), Les Années 10 (La Fabrique, 2014), Tomates (P.O.L., 2010), etc.
• Josep Rafanell i Orra, psychologist, author
— Petit traité de cosmoanarchisme (Divergences, 2023), Fragmenter le monde (Divergences, 2018), En finir avec le capitalisme thérapeutique (La Découverte, 2011), etc.
• Eugénie Mérieau, political scientist, constitutionalist
— Géopolitique de l’Etat d’exception (Le Cavalier Bleu, coll. “Géopolitique”, 2024), La dictature, une antithèse de la démocratie ? (Le Cavalier Bleu, 2019), etc.

TROISIEME PARTIE

• The Collectif La Buse and Réseau Salariat
— represented by Aurélien Catin (Notre Condition, Riot Editions, 2020)
• The initiative “Déborder Bolloré” supported by some fifty independent publishers
• The Soulèvements de la Terre
• The Collectif des Jeunes du Parc de Belleville, qui occupe actuellement la Gaîté Lyrique
• The Cultures en Lutte collective who coordinates the ‘Culture Riposte’ movement