The mysteries of the other are not your object. When you
dive into a life, it is with the intention to rise to the surface this
that a witness can bear of universal, and undoubtedly your
experience the theatre your debut as an actress in the workshops of
Did Peter Brook influence you in this way. Down with the masks,
of course, but always with this respect for others that made the quality of
your program on France 2.
Your first gig was about insanity, if I’m not mistaken,
as your programs will later attest, that the safe normality is
Far removed from your investigative spirit and risk-taking.
You start your career as a journalist in various newspapers like Le
French cooperator, Le Matin de Paris or Le Monde. In 1981, you
integrate television. At your beginnings you are interested in editing then
you work for a series of documentaries about cities like
Naples daily, reports on celebrities, on topics of
company for Antenna 2, FR3 or TF1. In 1984 you sign a
on incest, André and Jacqueline, the links of the
which earned you the ONDAS International Award. Then you turn
towards the privacy of famous personalities, I think of the series Past
the personal universe of Guy Bedos in Algeria,
Alice Sapritch in Turkey, or Yannick Noah in Cameroon.
In the early 1990s you founded your own house of
production, MD Productions, which releases a documentary trilogy on
crimes of passion: Crimes and passions. An exploration of the abyss that
wins many prestigious awards: a nomination to the 7
the Silver Fipa of Cannes, the Special Prize of the Jury Italia and the
European Cinema in Berlin.
As for your show Bas les masques, it’s a special moment
history of television. The taboos of society are discussed
without equivocation through the testimonies of individuals on the margins:
immigration, the prison world, as many subjects inviting on the small screen
and sketching the portrait of a France often poorly known.
Far from relying on the mere lifting of emotions to retain your audience,
it is the very job of a journalist, through his concern for information, that
you serve, as attested, without complacency, your triptych
documentary Prostitution, also named after the Golden 7.
When the masks fall, there are lots of solitudes, dramas
tender, violent, or skies wet with dreams, I think of The double life
of Johnny… Rock, suns after the rain in La Vie à l'endroit,
Confessions in Private Life, Public Life.
Television, as we know, is at the same time a privileged observatory of
trends and mores, both gauge of society and tool of its
evolution. “Television is ruthless, but so is life,” confide
; and in this difficult world of public broadcasting, it is with a
great professionalism, that you radiographed France, taking
both the individual and the social affiliations. The
sociological sketches, the relevant questions, the
broken photographs, the rendering of the adventures of the human condition, are your
signing.
Dear Mireille Dumas, on behalf of the President of the Republic and
of the powers vested in us, we make you Knight of the
Legion of Honour.
Dear Alex Descas,
In the world of cinema and television, you are distinguished by a
very singular profile, a style built over roles through
Characters both dense and austere, almost mutic, mysterious,
and wonderfully expressive at the same time. You belong to those
whose line of play is immediately recognizable, distinctive sign of
great actors.
You were not particularly destined to become an actor. In a
first time, you were going to music, with dilettante charm
people who are looking for themselves. It’s more by chance, and maybe
by an unconscious desire, that you have discovered the dramatic art in
accompanying a friend to register for a theatre course. The magic of
theatre has operated, you register overnight for the courses
Florent.
It was in 1984 that you started in Sergio Gobbi’s Crossbow.
The Hell Train of Roger Hanin, Blue as hell of Yves
Boisset, I hate the actors of Gérard Krawczyk, Alain Page’s Taxi Boy,
or Marco Ferreri’s Les Blancs and, also in 1987, Les Keufs
Josiane Balasko, alongside Isaac de Bankolé.
When he introduces you to filmmaker Claire Denis, she is
immediately seduced, and the cinema she offers seduces you
also. This is the beginning of a long-term collaboration that will spread over
nearly twenty years, with this nomadic and eternally marginal filmmaker,
former assistant to Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, these aesthetes
and Jacques Rivette, among others. In 1990, on the occasion of
her third movie, she’s giving you a big lead in Who cares,
where you play Jocelyn, rooster breeder for fights
Rungis, a lonely hero, in exile of himself. From this film
will be born the legend Descas. For your interpretation, you get the Prize
Michel Simon and are nominated for the Men’s Best Prospect César.
Having become Claire Denis' favourite actor, you shoot 6 films with her:
Nénette and Boni, who received the Leopard of Gold at the
Locarno, Trouble Every Day, The Intruder and 35 Rums where you perform a
railway worker. In this regard Claire Denis will confide: When Alex went
working at the SNCF to learn to drive, he was not the only Black.
I thought, well, SNCF is faster than cinema.”
For a long time tacit discrimination may have prevented you
access roles commensurate with your talent. The idea has you
tried your luck in the United States, but you
finally made the choice to stay, taking the bet of the evolution of
performances. The greatest directors of international cinema
are interested in you, and between 1984 and 1999 you tour with Peter
Handke, Wim Wenders, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Olivier Assayas, Sharunas
Bartas, Alain Guesnier, and I can’t quote them all.
You played the dictator Mobutu in Lumumba de
Raoul Peck in 2000. We can also see you in Coffee and
Cigarettes, most recently in Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, and
with a French director as demanding as Patrice Chéreau,
in Persecution in 2009, alongside Romain Duris,
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Jean-Hugues Anglade.
Alongside this French film career and
outstanding international, you have also become a star of the
I’m thinking about the Cordiers judges and cops,
as well as Nina Companéez’s Pursuit of the Wind, in a list
of some fifteen TV movies and series. It’s mostly in the role
title of the series Un flic de Patrick Dewolf sur France 2
Commissioner Schneider, that you set the bar high in the world of
French series. A character foreign to compromises that has without
doubt had for you a particular resonance, for you always have
fought color injustices on reels that are no longer, since
in black and white.
I will not forget to mention your journey to the theatre, where you
count twenty coins to your credit. On the boards, you play
for Peter Brook in Sizwe Banzi died, for his daughter, Irina Brook,
in The Slave Island of Marivaux, which broke
extensions… or in Martin Luther King or the strength to love
Hammou Graïa.
I am very pleased today to honour a French actor whose
contribution to film creation in France and around the world,
is built with the demands and talent of the greatest.
Dear Alex Descas, on behalf of the President of the Republic, we
Make him a Knight of the National Order of Merit.
Dear Thérèse Laval,
I am pleased to be able to honour today the high tax priestess of the
Ministry of Culture and Communication, and I am all the more
happy that your vocation to serve the State comes to serve with talent and
commitment to the responsibilities that are yours today at the sub-directorate
Department of Legal Affairs.
Since your arrival in Culture and Communication, you are a
dynamic interlocutor unanimously appreciated by successive firms
and the various branches of the department. Your perfect knowledge of
its operation, the finesse of your analysis, your ability to
proposal and anticipation, in every respect, bold, your
personal commitment, make you an essential collaborator.
From 1969, you taught law and economics. You are until 1980
Tax Controller at the Nancy Tax Services Branch as
responsible for the unit “Property rental value review”
You then, as a tax inspector, integrate the
audit department of Île-de-France, where you are responsible for
audit of cultural enterprises, then the prestigious
international audits of multinationals. This is where, in
Jack Lang’s initiative, you were picked up in September 1992, to
create a tax affairs mission within the Ministry of Culture and
This mission responds to the need of the Ministry of
have a tax expertise centre to better understand the
detailed rules for the application of national and Community tax law to
different actors of cultural life, and appreciate the possibilities
possible developments in cultural tax law.
As part of this mission, you have become a reference
essential for all tax issues affecting the cultural sector,
and you have many legislative and regulatory proposals
tax reform. I am thinking of the projects entrusted to you for the
reform of the tax system applicable to cultural associations
or the elaboration of an important
Department of Finance in collaboration with our department, the drafting
several fact sheets for cultural institutions
in the fields of performing arts, cinema and heritage.
You have also been involved in the development of a new
actual costs for artistic professions in 1999, at the drafting of the law
of 1 August 2003 on patronage under the authority of Eric Garandeau,
then advisor in charge of patronage to the Minister’s office, as well as
preparatory work for the law reforming the archaeology fee
in 2003, in liaison with the Architecture and
Heritage.
Each year, within the framework of the law of finance and collective
budget, you prepare the tax measures proposed by the department
Culture. This has resulted, for example, in the introduction of tax credits
in the fields of film and audiovisual production, film
phonographic production, or crafts, but also
professional tax exemption for photographers-authors, as well as
the improvement of the system of withholding tax for artists
and the improvement of the tax system of patronage, monuments and
historical and classified movable objects.
For the ministry, cultural organizations, public institutions,
but also for individuals, artists, owners of
listed monuments, you have become an indispensable advisor,
a knowledgeable, attentive and rigorous interlocutor who can help them see
the complex complexities of tax services and their
proceeding.
Finally, I know that you are committed to sharing your knowledge and
to make the new generations aware of the subtleties of cultural taxation,
since you teach in a Master 2 of management
cultural institutions within the prestigious University Paris-
Dauphine.
As you prepare to cultivate your personal garden, I am
very pleased to honour a senior public servant who has always demonstrated
a strong sense of public service, a woman committed to serving action
culture in France, by helping to animate, energize and
attractive cultural sector, allowing to preserve and encourage what
the artistic and cultural richness of our country.
Dear Thérèse Laval, on behalf of the President of the Republic, we
Make him a Knight of the National Order of Merit.
Dear Rémy Aron,
It’s at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in Gustave Singier’s studio,
that you are doing your apprenticeship, with Roger Plin and Jean in particular
Bertholle for teachers. Once you graduate, you reside at the Cité
International Arts from 1974 to 1975. Your compositions are then oriented
towards a figurative style that favours traditional techniques: the pencil,
oil, acrylic, pastel, charcoal. Your paint, open to the games of
light, has for themes of predilection still lifes, the workshop, the
interior views, living patterns, landscapes, where lately you
introduce architectural elements. A color, a dot, often, y
are enough to evoke a volume, in a personal universe made of allusions,
suggestions, dream shifts.
Your work is now exhibited in galleries around the world,
United States, Japan, Lebanon and Morocco. It’s in China
that you organize your biggest exhibitions, in Canton, Dongguan,
Wuxi and Panjin. Your fruitful work gets many awards: a
Casa Velasquez residence grant in Madrid in 1979, a
Regional Council of Ile-de-France in 1982 and 1985, the first Prize
Noufflard awarded by the Fondation de France, then the Grand Prix Fernand
Cormon, awarded by the Taylor Foundation. You will also receive the
Gold medal of French artists.
You who know the particular universe of the salons to have there very
often exhibited, as at the Salon d'Automne, the Salon de Mai, the Salon
Today’s Adults and Youth, at the Biennale 109, at the Salon Comparaisons,
you were also secretary general of the
Federation of the Historical Salons of the Grand Palais. You defended
the essential expertise that salons bring to art, and their ability to
to create a pool of discoveries for new artists, both for
visitors, for institutions, and for the art market.
Your commitment to art and artists is also your
teaching painting and engraving since 1982 in the workshop of
Fine Arts of the City of Paris; and this is of course your presidency, since
2005, from the Maison des Artistes, a mandate that is particularly important to you
Founded in 1952, the Maison des Artistes is a unique
in France, which protects the interests of plastic artists by being
management of their social security system. You are working to
to defend creation, by supporting artists and their place in the City
to keep their eyes free.
The visual arts in France are fortunate to have one
of the great painters of our time among their privileged allies. Dear
Rémy Aron, on behalf of the French Republic, we make you
Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.