An initiative of the association, Les Amis du Cinéma du réel
The Public Forum event offers opportunities to discuss the issues and demands specific to documentary cinema. Institutions, professional organisations and the French documentary industry at large, as well as their international partners and counterparts come together to share their experiences and thoughts in order to find solutions and reflect on the future of documentary filmmaking.
These exchanges revolve around a theme chosen by Les Amis du Cinéma du réel, which sees to the smooth running of the discussions thanks to a dedicated work group set up for this purpose. The Public Forum aims to highlight the concerns facing French industry professionals, as well as the challenges linked to documentary production.
101 boulevard Raspail, Paris 6e
Today, liberal policies accompanied by a strictly ideological vision of culture conveyed by the far right, which is echoed in many political events, put documentary cinema in danger. Its power of expression and its ability to represent reality are undoubtedly part of the reason for this.
These attacks are occurring in a climate where profitability and media conditioning favor standardisation, and where the relays of popular education are lacking or marginalised, pushing our films into entrenched territory, perceived by some as an exclusive circle, far removed from the public’s expectations. This makes it easy to associate us, and the cultural field as a whole, with an elite that profits from state funds: an enemy to be destroyed. Thus, we see that it is now politically expedient to attack culture.
However, the cinema that we produce and screen is first and foremost an art driven by and towards encounters with others, and moreover in a craft-based mode of production that affirms a certain relationship with places, people, and their stories.
We have never stopped fighting and resisting to build and protect an independent creative space, free from the rules of the market on its own. We defend absolute creative freedom so that the axiom attributed to Rosselini is preserved : “To film what is, so that one day we may know what was.”
The results of the recent elections and what happened afterwards, leaving the door wide open to authoritarian and reactionary methods of governance, mean that we have to react. How can we commit ourselves artistically to imagining stories that can fight this unstoppable advance of the most extreme 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 brainstorming is being initiated, often based on an observation of helplessness in the face of what is about to happen. It’s time to get together and think about how we can save documentary cinema, envisioning a counter-offensive proportionate to the danger we face.
At the Forum Public, a number of men and women representing civil society, intellectuals and professionals, will speak about the attacks that have been made on them, but also, and more importantly, about the many actions that are emerging here and there. This will be an opportunity to bring them together and increase their number, to initiate an uprising in the cultural community, the only response that can ensure a future where culture thrives!