With the pandemic, “Cinema productions and distributors are having a terrible time. Added to this is the stranglehold of the platforms on authors. It’s quite serious (…) They have recreated Hollywood”, denounced Agnès Jaoui, during her first press conference as president of the Toulouse film library Wednesday January 12.
“Having dealt with platforms, I decided to quit because I have always been free to write and make films, and I intend to stay that way”, she added, believing that platforms hinder creativity and make filmmakers “employees“.
Succeeding director Robert Guédiguian as president of this national film library, where she was elected on December 14 for three years, she “dream“to promote encounters between different audiences and to honor forgotten women directors.
“I really want meetings to take place, cross-functionalities, that we can make music, take pictures, meet people of different ages” for “a real exchange, a real mix because I hate ghettos”, she stressed.
Agnès Jaoui, who in 2018 denounced the lack of women at the Caesar and Cannes, would also like “to honor women who have made films” because “if there aren’t books, journalists, art historians and projections that showcase them, we forget them”.
This committed director, who called to vote against Marine Le Pen in the 2017 presidential election, also denounced the current “fight of who is the most far-right”, judging him “creepy”.
Robert Guédiguian, who had chaired the film library since 2016, told AFP that he had asked Agnès Jaoui to succeed him because “not only is she a filmmaker, but also an actress”. “An actor is brilliant, intelligent, he knows the history of cinema, etc. A producer we don’t know who knows, a director we hardly know (…) What we see is when even the actors “, he added.
Asked about his points in common with Agnès Jaoui, he underlined their idea of a “cinema that cares about the public” and “that popular cinema can be great art “.