“No ceremony can ever represent the polysemy of cinema.
[...]
It is the very subtlety of art, its magic, which we missed at this evening of Caesar, where only the disappeared and the images of the past seemed to keep the gift and even the desire to enchant us . "
This is the - sad - observation posed by Caroline Fourest, Isabelle Adjani and Rachel Khan, in a column published on March 18 in the columns of
Elle
magazine
.
Reacting to the Caesar ceremony, which shone through its protest and identity character, the three women took up the pen to warn French cinema - and culture more generally - against the ambient sectarianism.
To read also: Rachel Khan: "The victim speech of pseudo-antiracists is unbearable to me"
However,
"the voters of the Academy knew how to reward real hopes, very different kinds of films"
, suggesting a hope for the seventh art, hard hit by the health crisis.
It was without counting on the victim and community posture adopted by certain actors:
“With real exceptions, it is the emotion which flees, letting float the feeling of one between oneself which one did not address. than his own, without really talking to others, ”
sign Fourest, Adjani and Khan about each other's positions during the evening.
“Almost everyone came to deliver the monologue that was expected of him.
As if it were necessary to speak about "its causes" to "its community" or to "its followers".
As if it were becoming impossible to find the words for everyone.
As if the cinema no longer knew how to bring people together. "
Censorship
And to (re) ask the eternal question that those who were shocked by the spectacle of March 12.
With such speeches, with such exhibitions - both literally and figuratively -, with such "egotism" to use a Stendhalian term,
"how do you make you want to reopen the rooms to find your way around?"
Beyond the cinema, it is art and freedom which are prey to sectarianism and to “cancel culture”:
“In three and a half hours, we heard about all the evils people who shake up social networks, but very little freedom of expression and creation, yet threatened. "
A subject well mastered by Rachel Khan, herself released by the Hipo-Hop La Place association, which she co-directs, after her statements to
Figaro
about her book
Racée
.
“A new form of censorship is rising
,” the manifesto continues.
Bullying and summons eat away at our freedoms to write, translate, draw, perform or interpret.
Do you have to be gay to make a film about a love affair between men?
Black, young and American to translate a young African-American poet?
White to play a burglar gentleman who is a fan of Lupine?
Have the same identity as a character to play it? "
An imperative in which the authors do not believe.
Read also: Attacks on young women in skirts: Isabelle Adjani's cry of anger
Resistance
"We do not want a world where everyone has to speak on behalf of their community, and only if they are" concerned "
, they continue, arguing that the
" beauty "
and
" nobility "
of resident cinema, precisely, in the fact of
“putting oneself in another's skin”
, in the transcendence of
“belonging to play a personal score, which moves beyond oneself”
.
"Whatever his color, religion, sex, gender, sexuality and the thousand facets that forge his identity"
, details the text.
"This swarming emotion, without borders, a cinema free to imagine anything, without ceiling or obligatory course"
, the authors are eager to
"find them in theaters
", as well as the some
"one hundred and fifty French films"
which
"are waiting to tell us a story. a history that is both unique and universal ”
.
In order, they conclude,
“to laugh, to cry, and to dream together”
.
