"A blow from the club" . Robert Schlockoff has no other word to say about the confinement and closure of movie theaters on March 14. The press secretary, 40 years of profession and a long experience in the fantastic cinema (he accompanied the films of Romero, Carpenter, Craven, Raimi before opening to other genres), could not have imagined worse horror movie.
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The whole cinema chain is stopped, the film releases postponed indefinitely , the Cannes festival canceled, and the reopening of theaters still hypothetical (July? September?). If the deconfinement should allow certain shootings to resume in a post-Covid form (test and quarantine of the actors, physical distancing and barrier gestures for the teams), the sector is still on pause.
Producers, distributors, operators and intermittent workers have called for help to save the industry. And they were received by the State or by the National Cinema Center (CNC). Press officers are the forgotten ones of the crisis, among the million cultural workers who are in a blind spot. "We are filmmakers but our job is not quantifiable," says Robert Schlockoff. Most often passionate craftsmen. An invisible and fragile link, but essential to the life and notoriety of films. A press officer works on the project, film or festival, depending on the affinities.
Most of them self-employed, paid in fees by distributors, they do not have the status of intermittent workers, and are not entitled to technical unemployment. " We continue to pay our expenses, rents, Urssaf while we have no income," regrets Marie Queysanne, press officer since 1997 and who participated in the success of Les Misérables , from Cannes to the César. To make themselves heard and to unite a profession in need of structure, these press attachés created in March the association CLAP (Free Circle of Film Press Attachés). It now has around sixty members, almost all of the players in the industry, with the exception of companies with more than four employees. "The government has encouraged the status of auto-entrepreneur, it has promoted independence but in case of cessation of activity, it leaves us on the floor," laments Laurence Granec, president of Clap, attached to press among others by Ken Loach and Nanni Moretti.
We're gonna die with your mouth open
Robert Schlockoff,CLAP sent a first letter to Dominique Boutonnat, the president of the CNC, on March 24. It went unanswered. “We sent him a second letter at the end of April and he sent us a PDF listing situations that do not concern us. We are waiting for an appointment to be able to discuss. "
In addition to emergency measures (exemption from charges over the next twelve months, creation of a solidarity fund), Clap claims to be more closely linked to developments in the development of the sector. Between the absence of Cannes which deprives them of visibility over the coming months and the shortage of film due to the coronavirus, press officers have made the calculation: each on its own scale, the shortfall will amount to 70%. "I am optimistic that people will return to theaters," says Laurence Granec. The question is when. This will be done gradually, I think we will have to wait until 2021 to regain the level of attendance before the pandemic. "
Restarting the machine will take time. Time, precisely, the press officers do not have one. The sector and the authorities must not let them down. "Otherwise," concludes Robert Schlockoff, " we will die with our mouths open. "