France

[FR] Minister for Culture lists her three ‘battles’ in favour of French cinema

IRIS 2018-6:1/18

Amélie Blocman

Légipresse

In a speech delivered on 18 April at a reception in honour of the French films selected for the next Cannes Film Festival, Minister for Culture Françoise Nyssen referred to her three “battles” in defence of the French cinema.

Firstly, this June will see the holding of a “session in favour of gender equality in the cinema”, at which a series of measures will be discussed with all the representatives of the sector, beginning with the drawing-up of an equality charter, agreement with which would become a condition for receiving the Centre national du cinema et de l’image animée (French national centre for cinema, CNC) aid. The charter will have to broach the matter of equal pay, and a system of bonuses will be set up for those films that are particularly exemplary in terms of parity or the promotion of women to certain key posts within their teams. The Minister also said she wanted to create a fund to help young female directors worldwide to develop and produce their films. The fund would be open to female directors from anywhere in the world.

The Minister’s second “battle” in favour of the cinema involved the support for film-making, in particular with the support from the CNC, almost half of which is selective aid that allows France to be “the” country of “auteur” cinema, and the home of filmmakers from all over the world. Increased tax credits also enabled France to attract a considerable level of investment. Lastly, the Minister announced that film-making would play a key role in the current reform of the public audiovisual sector.

The Minister’s third “battle” in respect of the cinema lay in regulation, with current negotiations focusing on the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, and more particularly the quotas for European works imposed on VOD platforms and the fight to combat the de-localisation of channels and platforms. The Minister also reiterated that she was in favour of regulating mediation on media chronology, although no agreement appears to be forthcoming.

Lastly, the Minister indicated her determination to take action against all forms of piracy, by developing the “graduated response” mechanism and giving priority to the fight against pirate sites, so that all their sources would dry up and they would simply disappear. She announced that the HADOPI (Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet - a Government body in charge of copyright enforcement online) would be compiling blacklists so that advertisers, payment services and browsers would be able to know which sites were illegal and stop dealing with them. The aim was to block or de-reference such sites, together with all mirror sites that were created when a principal site closed down. This power could be conferred on HADOPI, under the supervision of a judge, in order to address the two-fold requirement of the rapid, lasting suppression of piracy sites over time. The Minister recalled that “nothing like this has been thought of since HADOPI was created, which was nearly ten years ago”, and reiterated her desire for the role and powers of HADOPI to be strengthened and, symbolically, for its name to be changed in order to mark the beginning of a new era.