(Cannes) Some 500 mainly French-speaking filmmakers, including Albert Dupontel, Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano or the brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, denounce industry interference in their artistic work, “in the name of profitability”, in a statement released on Tuesday.
Gathered by the Society of Film Directors (SRF), guardian of auteur cinema, these artists are alarmed in this text published on the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival that “the diversity and vitality (of cinema is) increasingly weakened by certain practices that contravene the fundamental principles of copyright and freedom of creation.
They cite in particular “modified scenarios, (of) artistic collaborators and imposed distributions, (of) films modified during editing by broadcasters, (of) prescribed music choices”.
These practices, “in the name of profitability”, “invariably represent a form of censorship which alters any creative process”, they believe.
“They call into question the freedom of experimentation and end up making the author invisible, by getting dangerously close to the notion of “copyright” that prevails in the American market”. In the American legal tradition, unlike in Europe, the director does not have the last word and can lose control of the destiny of his work.
Consequently, the signatories claim that the final version of the screenplay, the title of the film, the final version of the editing or even the credits cannot be modified without the agreement of the artist.
Among the signatories are also Costa Gavras, Kev Adams, Jacques Audiard, Claire Denis, Nicole Garcia or even Alice Winocour.
The issue of respecting the rights of the various actors in the film creation chain is a burning issue, as evidenced by the scriptwriters’ strike which is currently paralyzing Hollywood.