Study days organized by the History Committee on 23 and 24 January 2013 at the National Institute of Art History (75002)

The History Committee of the Ministry organized in partnership with the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (HiCSA) two days of studies The Politics of Cinema in France (1945-1970): Issues and Contexts.

These days of studies were intended to report on the work carried out as part of a research project on film policy, and in particular on the timing of the incorporation of the National Film Centre into the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the creation of the latter in 1959.

The preferred approach is that of cultural history, which in this case seeks to establish links between administrative aspects and the economic, political, social and cultural dimensions of this object. This "time of 1959" was therefore, at first, considered in these various aspects, and at a second time, reintroduced in a longer period to consider the relations between the implementation of a cinema policy by the public authorities and the major issues of the place of cinema in French society of the fifties and sixties. The creation and evolution of the CNC, financial support for the film sector, the emergence of the notions of “quality” and “heritage” and the modalities of their progressive consideration by public authorities, changes in cinematic culture with the rise of the cinema club movement, competing forms of appropriation of cinema in the social body (examples of Catholics or the communist movement): these various illuminations, among other things, they shed light on the stakes and particularities of the "moment 1959" and the evolution of French cinema policy at the beginning of the Fifth Republic.

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Audiovisual recordings of these days of study are available by appointment at History committee