Aurélie Filippetti and Fleur Pellerin signed with Frédérique Bredin, President of the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, Xavier Darcos, President of the Institut français, and Jean-Paul Salomé, President of Unifrance, two conventions on the digitisation of cinemas in the French cultural network and on the promotion of cinema education abroad.
Within its cultural institutions, France has an international network of multi-purpose rooms dedicated to promoting French culture abroad. These cinemas are an essential tool for the non-commercial dissemination of French film heritage, the promotion of recent films and the international influence of our image industry.
It is therefore with a view to modernising and disseminating French creation that the first convention aims to digitize rooms in this network from France abroad.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development has put in place an extensive digitization plan and some 20 rooms are already equipped or in the process of being equipped. The convention provides that the CNC will make a financial contribution to the digitization of the rooms of the French institutes located in Abidjan, Barcelona, Beirut, Budapest, Dakar, Hanoi, Istanbul, Jakarta, Cairo, Libreville, Madrid, Phnom Penh, Rio de Janeiro, Sofia, Tokyo and Yaoundé.
Another key axis: the signatories wanted to establish a strengthened partnership in order to better coordinate the promotion of French film abroad. Thus, the digitized rooms will participate in the organization of events related to Unifrance (previews, festivals, talent invitations, accompanying commercial outings) and the French Institute (cultural and educational action, promotion and non-commercial dissemination of programmes of heritage films and of recent films not distributed, professional accompaniment).
In addition, the second convention will promote educational facilities for cinema abroad.
Over the past thirty years, France has been able to create artistic education systems for cinema that are based on the discovery in cinemas of works representative of world cinematic creation. School and cinema, Film college, High school students and film apprentices, coordinated by the CNC, today benefit 1,400,000 students in French schools.
The purpose of the Convention is to develop and establish a long-term partnership to promote film education schemes abroad. A programme of films, based on the catalogue of feature films, will be broadcast throughout the French cultural diplomatic network and its partners. Educational materials developed under the auspices of the TNC will be made available to partners in this program.
Aurélie Filippetti, Minister of Culture and Communication and Fleur Pellerin, Secretary of State responsible for external trade, the promotion of tourism and French from abroad, are delighted to combine their governmental actions, in favour of a public to develop and with young audiences in the world, at the service of an art and an industry, French cinema that participates in the cultural and international influence of France.