MORE INFORMATION
- The direction of the César resigns after the protests for opacity and lack of parity
- The rain of Caesar nominations revives the controversy surrounding Polanski
- The César earthquake opens a crack in French cultural power
Hard not to consider it a calm gesture. The Academy of French cinema, which awards the César awards, announced on Wednesday the election of a woman, the producer Margaret Menegoz, as the new interim president of the institution. A news that comes only two days from the most important ceremony of the French cinema, the ceremony of the César, clouded for weeks by the protests of feminist groups due to the 12 nominations of the last film by Roman Polanski, The officer and the spy. This issue has been joined in recent days by the complaints of artists for the opacity and lack of parity in the cultural institution. This already caused the resignation, on February 13, of the leadership of the board. The big question, which will probably only be resolved the night of the delivery of the César, this Friday in Paris, is whether the appointment of Menegoz will suffice to placate the spirits.
Menegoz, who, among others, has produced films by Michael Haneke, Éric Rohmer or Andrzej Wajda, will serve "after the resignation of Alain Terzian from the presidency of the association for the promotion of cinema" and will be in charge of directing the Academy until its dome is renewed, a process that will begin with a first meeting, on April 20, and that will continue with a second general assembly “in summer,” the National Cinema Center (CNC) has announced in a statement.
The direction of the Academy, of which Menegoz was already part, presented his “collective resignation” on February 13 to “proceed to the complete renewal of the direction”, a measure required by hundreds of actors, filmmakers and producers, who signed a tribune in Le Monde criticizing the "opacity" of the institution and the lack of parity in its governing bodies and in the composition of the Academy. A measure that was taken after Terzian's promise, at the head of the institution since 2003, that it would increase the presence of women in the governing and decision-making bodies of the Academy, which, however, has failed to silence the protests .
The announcement of the selection of a woman to preside over the Academy has come on the same day that the headquarters of the institution woke up full of posters of a feminist group claiming "the annulment" of the ceremony of "the Caesar of shame" for the “Violanski” nominations, according to France Info.
A reform in several steps
Menegoz will be leading the Academy at least until the first general assembly on April 20, according to the CNC. On that date, the members of the association must “adopt the new statutes and provisionally replace the resigning members of the board of directors, pending the installation of a definitive governance,” the statement explains.
These new statutes will be elaborated "within the framework of a broad agreement with all the film sectors", in a process organized by the CNC itself "in the coming weeks". The new rules should "allow the expansion of the number of members of the association and the diversification of their recruitment," the institution added. The final governance will be decided in a new general assembly to be held “in summer” and in which the new members will already participate. That will be when, according to the process delineated by the CNC, a new board of directors will be elected, whose composition “must be in accordance with the principles of representativeness, diversity and parity guaranteed by the new statutes”. That new dome will be the one that initiates the reform of the electoral college of the César.