“The end-of-shoot pots sometimes look like a landing of sailors in the port of Amsterdam.
This sentence, pronounced in a video by a technician of the cinema, makes smile in the rows.
And yet, some laugh yellow.
This Tuesday morning, at the National Cinema Center (CNC), in Paris (14th century), around fifty managers of cinema, audiovisual or video game companies are attending the very first session of a training session entitled Prevent and act. against gender-based and sexual violence.
The first in a series of 90 which should reach 9,000 professionals within three years.
Set up after the Weinstein scandal and the MeToo movement, this training will now be essential to claim the subsidies paid by the CNC.
"It is not that complicated to prove violence", "You are required to make inquiries", "We cannot just say
it is word against word
" ... In her introductory speech, Marilyn Baldeck, the General Delegate of the European Association against Violence Against Women at Work (AVFT), confronts her audience with its responsibilities.
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“There is a cultural exception, but no legal exception”, underlines the trainer.
In other words: in the cinema as elsewhere, the employer is required to guarantee a "secure" working environment ... and a victim of harassment can attack him in the industrial tribunal in the event of an assault.
The manager then broadcasts an edifying video, in which an assistant director, an operator and an editor explain how the working conditions in the cinema promote ambiguous behavior between men and women… And sometimes sexual violence.
They describe the closed workspaces, the boxes where one can find oneself alone and therefore vulnerable, the “unfailing loyalty” of the assistant to his boss, the promiscuity on an assembly bench, the work in the evening, the trips away from home ("For some, a hotel room is not made for sleeping alone," slips one) and, therefore, those famous end-of-shoot pots, where "some sometimes let go a little the animal ”.
These three technicians tell about the strategies they develop in the face of these “risky” situations: “You have to steer clear because otherwise, you are too easily exposed”, assures one, while another coward: "You have to protect yourself, that you put your arms forward".
"We cannot wait for there to be a drama to act"
Finally, they speak of the “law of silence”.
"I would not know who to contact
(Editor's note: in case of aggression)
, recognizes the editor.
There is such a big money stake in films.
You feel like you're boycotting the movie if you're going to say something.
"The assistant director concludes:" There is a space between the start of an unprofessional relationship and the drama.
We cannot wait for there to be a drama to act.
"
After these testimonies, the students must think about concrete cases.
The AVFT trainer, who accompanied Adèle Haenel when the actress denounced the director Christophe Ruggia for “sexual touching”, asks her “students” how they would react to certain situations.
If a cinematographer kicks off a first camera assistant at every lunch, is the producer responsible?
If a director massages an editor who does not want to, is it reprehensible?
And what about an actor who sends a professional email to a technician and, in the process, offers to sleep with him?
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Adèle Haenel, spearhead of the #MeToo movement in France
During 3h30, the directors of the cinema, audiovisual industry and video games learn that, on a shoot, if a sexual assault occurs at night, the employer is still responsible.
That he can constitute a "file" against a presumed aggressor by collecting the testimony of the victim, but also of those who have taken her confidences or even who have seen her leaving a room crying.
Or that the law now recognizes “environmental” aggression, a term which designates, for example, the situation of a woman who would work in an office where her male colleagues would post pictures of naked women.
At the end of the training, which the participants will have to validate by an online test which will allow them to obtain a certificate, Pauline Seigland, producer at Films Grand Huit, is very enthusiastic: “I am 33 years old, I work on movie sets since I was 18 and I needed this legal information to know the remedies in the event of harassment or assault.
There is an astounding impunity in the world of cinema ”.
"The possibility for a trainee to express himself is almost zero"
For this professional, member of the 50/50 collective, which works for parity, equality and diversity in cinema and audiovisual, if the seventh art is a place conducive to "slippage", it is because of its organization "very hierarchical, as in the army", where "the possibility for a trainee to express himself is almost zero".
An observation shared by producer Sophie Deloche, who emphasizes: "On a set, where you have to face a constant emergency, there are chefs at each station, which promotes relations of domination".
The two women also put forward the "aura" that is granted to a director, the "admiration" of technicians for their superiors or the status of intermittent in the show, which implies the need to "belong to a family ”to get contracts.
"We have swallowed, snakes, words, attitudes and unacceptable laughter", sighs Pauline Seigland.
“Between us, we criticized these sexist behaviors, but we did not think that we had the right to consider it as an aggression”, abounds Sophie Deloche.
The series of 90 CNC training sessions should reach 9,000 professionals within three years.
LP / Delphine Goldsztejn
Is the cinema, more than other sectors, particularly conducive to sexual harassment?
“Yes, that's for sure,” says Alexandre Charlet, producer at Films du cygne.
It is the world of temptation, the cinema ”.
And the producer remembered the shooting of a “hot” scene in the shower where, because the director found that we “didn't believe it enough”, the actor had gone “too far” with the actress .
"We had not shot a third take and we had changed the script so that the actor was removed," he says.
Convinced of the interest of the training, the producer wonders about its implementation: "Perhaps it will be necessary to modify the contracts of our technicians, our actors or their agents so that, if one of the them slips and must be fired, the financial consequences do not rest only on the producer?
As the head of the AVFT indicated, training is only a "first brick" in the fight against gender-based and sexual violence: "After that, everything remains to be done".