CINEMA

I believe that it’s safe to say that my love for cinema no longer needs to be demonstrated – I take as witnesses the numerous articles that I regularly inflict on you, published here under the Cinema section.

I am lucky enough to live in a neighborhood which is home to three arthouse cinemas, the Club de l’Étoile, the Balzac and the Mac Mahon cinema, which offer a different way of experiencing cinema (that is far, very far from blockbusters).

The Club de l’Étoile was built in the 1920s and even became a clandestine venue during WWII.

The Balzac, where my children were lucky enough to go to with their school, has been open since 1935.

The Mac Mahon cinema dates back to 1938 and specialized in the distribution of American films banned during the French Occupation, at the very end of said war. It will also host the filming of certain scenes from “Breathless”, the emblematic New Wave film by Jean-Luc Godard. Owned since 2000 by the Bolloré group (which is not to delight me – the group perfectly illustrates the concentration of media powers in France), the Mac Mahon alternates between the rebroadcast of great classics of American cinema, the broadcast of works of art and essay and the organization of events.

In any case, Bolloré group or not, I regularly wonder how these independent cinemas – they are twenty-nine in Paris – manage to survive in a society where a vast majority of people want to consume (because we are talking about well, once again, consumption) a visual content which does not put too much strain on their neurons.

I fear, once again, to speak today about a heritage which will perhaps no longer exist in a century. And we may ultimately need Bollorés and co. who come to financially support these historic and beautiful cinemas, often intimate with their only one or three or four screens and always formidable in terms of programming.

I don’t know.

Anyway. Here I am in front of the Mac Mahon cinema to declare my eternal love for the seventh art.