Organizers of France’s Oscars Resign, 2 Weeks Before Ceremony

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/arts/cesars-resignations-polanski.html

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With just over two weeks to go before France’s equivalent of the Oscars, the entire board of the César Academy, which organizes the awards, resigned Thursday night, after around 400 of the country’s leading filmmakers and actors said in an open letter that its leadership was dysfunctional.

The academy worked in ways that were “a vestige of an era that we would like to be over, that of an elitist and closed system,” the signees wrote in the newspaper Le Monde.

Like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the César Academy is made up of people who work in the movie business. But its members can only vote for the awards the academy hands out, not for the organization’s leadership.

“Why can’t the 4,700 members of the academy vote to elect their representatives, as is the case at the Oscars, BAFTAs and European Academy of Cinema?” the letter said.

The board’s resignation was an effort to “regain serenity,” the academy said in a news release. It would also allow a “complete renewal” of the academy’s management.

Franck Riester, France’s culture minister, wrote in a series of tweets that the academy must change to represent the diversity of French cinema.

The mass resignation is only the latest crisis to hit the César Awards, which have been surrounded by controversy since this year’s nominations were announced on Jan. 29. Roman Polanski’s “J’accuse,” about Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish military officer wrongly convicted of treason in what remains France’s most notorious miscarriage of justice, gained the most.

The film topped the French box office after its release in November and received rave reviews, but many felt the praise was misplaced, since, in 1978, Mr. Polanski fled the United States to France after pleading guilty to a charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old.

Last November, Valentine Monnier, a French photographer, also accused Mr. Polanski of raping her in 1975, when she was 18, at a ski chalet in Switzerland. Mr. Polanski has denied the accusation.

On Feb. 11, a host of French feminist organizations said they would protest this year’s award ceremony because of Mr. Polanski’s nominations. “If rape is an art, give Polanski all the Césars,” they said in an open letter to the newspaper Le Parisien.

“With these 12 nominations, the world of cinema gave frank and unconditional support to a rapist on the run,” the letter added.

The accusations around Mr. Polanski are only one of several sex abuse scandals causing a stir in France’s cultural world. Last year, Adèle Haenel, a well-known actress, said that from age 12 she was sexually harassed by the director Christophe Ruggia on the set of “The Devils,” a 2002 film about orphans in a children’s home. He denies the accusation.

In January, Gabriel Matzneff, an author who had long written about sexual contact with girls and boys in their early teens, also came under scrutiny after one of his victims, Vanessa Springora, said Mr. Matzneff had abused her. On Feb. 12, Mr. Matzneff was charged with promoting the sexual abuse of children, in a case filed by l’Ange Bleu, an anti-pedophilia organization.

The letter from the 400 filmmakers about the César Academy did not mention these scandals, but focused on the poor leadership at the organization. Its 4,700 members pay annual fees, the letter said, but are only able to vote in the awards rather than decide how it is run. “We have no voice,” the letter added.

The signees also criticized Alain Terzian, the academy’s president, for events around a January dinner associated with the awards. Young actors who attended the dinner were allowed to bring along an older star of their choosing, and two asked to go with Claire Denis and Virginie Despentes, both well-known feminists. The academy refused to invite them.

Mr. Terzian’s actions in blocking their attendance occurred “in an arbitrary, even discriminatory manner,” without explanation, the letter said.

A spokesman for the academy did not respond to an interview request on Friday.

This year’s Césars will be held Feb. 28. The academy’s general assembly will meet afterward to ratify the board’s resignations and then decide how the organization can be modernized, the news release said.