KINO SLANG

KINO SLANG wholeheartedly

supports LA CLEF REVIVAL !

The ongoing story of LA CLEF REVIVAL––the last association-run cinema in Paris and the only one established by peoples' occupation and support rather than economic or institutional acquisition or absorption––has not been reported in the Anglo-American press. For the backstory in English see the excellent guide to Cinéma LA CLEF by Flavia Dima, writing for the Romanian film magazine Films in Frame.

Below is an English translation of LA CLEF REVIVAL's recent platform statement on what they've achieved in the last two years as a cinema, and on their scheduled eviction, an eviction that they, by all means, are set to resist. Following that is a statement of support and admiration for LA CLEF REVIVAL by KINO SLANG.

The complexities of French law––including a Mayoral reprieve half-supporting LA CLEF, and the "Sueur" law which protects community-run cinemas––may have helped delay the invasion of LA CLEF REVIVAL by the police and the buyers of the property, who in unison consider LA CLEF's occupation an illegal "squat". But those French complexities have now given way to a situation much more familiar, brute, and outrageous the world over: the legal, organized barbarism of an eviction. The ransacking of a non-profit neighborhood cinema, LA CLEF and its occupants, by a billionaire group in the name of nothing but the dictatorship of money. 

LA CLEF REVIVAL IS DUE TO BE EVICTED TOMORROW, FEBRUARY 1st. They are being ordered to vacate by the police TODAY, January 31st. 

Nevertheless, courage from LA CLEF's FB dispatch this morning:

THE DOORS ARE OPEN 

AT LA CLEF REVIVAL 

EVICTION IMMINENT!  

 

The collective which has occupied the LA CLEF cinema for more than two years has until January 31 to leave the premises. Faced with this threat, we do not intend to give up or put the key (la clef) under the door! WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! The doors of LA CLEF will be open all week to those who are concerned. The future of cinema!

MOBILIZATION CONTINUES THIS WEEK! 

 

The police department ordered us to leave the premises of LA CLEF today at the latest. Starting tomorrow at 6am, we will be more expelled than ever!
KEEP SUPPORTING US! 

 

- Today, at 3:30 PM: WANG BING will be present after the screening of his film THE MAN WITH NO NAME ! 

 

- Tonight at 8:30 pm: CARTE BLANCHE LEOS CARAX: UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE (1982) by Jacques Demy, followed by an exchange with Leos Carax!

AND TOMORROW, TUESDAY, we invite all our supporters to come and occupy LA CLEF beginning at 6 am. We will welcome you inside the cinema with coffee, croissants and surprise screenings, in accordance with health measures. COME IN NUMBERS. YES!

To support LA CLEF REVIVAL from afar there is a petition here. When I know of other ways of support, I will post them. You can follow LA CLEF REVIVAL via their main website, or via social media: FB, Twitt, Insta; they post across all of them with gusto. Last night Frederick Wiseman was there with JUVENILE COURT. Today Wang Bing and Leos Carax. Tomorrow, day of eviction, Valerie Massadian's NANA and GO FISH by Rose Troche. . .

At the 11th hour, which is now, let's be aware of their situation, make it known we are aware and in support of LA CLEF REVIVAL and their occupation, and against their eviction, and all evictions like it, and against the compromising of uncompromising cinemas.

Struggles are 

contagious too

«What consoles me, anyway, 

is knowing that there is 

always somewhere 

in the world, at any time––

when it stops in Tokyo 

it starts again in New York, 

in Moscow, in Paris, 

in Caracas––there is always, 

I say, a little monotonous noise, 

but intransigent in its monotony, 

and this noise is that of 

a projector projecting a film. 

Our duty is that this noise never stops.»

Godard to Langlois 

half-price

far from vietnam

one hundred children waiting for a train

the man with no name

black liberation

We Will Not Put the Key Under the Door

[Poster by member of LA CLEF REVIVAL]

*

PLATFORM – LA CLEF REVIVAL – AGAINST ITS EVICTION

TRIBUNE – LA CLEF REVIVAL – CONTRE SON EXPULSION

The order was given to evict us as soon as possible. The cinema that our collective has been occupying and supporting for two and a half years is the property of a union of executives, the CFE-CGC, at the head of the works council of the Caisse d'Épargne, in a hurry to sell the building to the highest bidder and annoyed by our stubborn presence within its walls.

For the past two and a half years that we’ve been fighting to preserve the last association-run cinema (cinéma associatif) in Paris, we have invented a way of seeing and making films that arouses unprecedented enthusiasm and solidarity. Nearly 15,000 spectators attended more than 500 screenings – rare, forgotten or fragile works, shown for pay-what-you-can (prix libre) admission to allow everyone to discover them. 

More than a hundred filmmakers have given us their support by coming to meet the public of La Clef. Institutions and public authorities welcome our actions in favor of distribution and creation. We have set up a residency for young filmmakers, Studio 34; initiated free image education workshops for schoolchildren, La Petite Évasion; organized two radio podcasts, with concerts, interviews, roundtables...

In short, we have worked, on a voluntary basis, to create a place of discovery, encounters and creation, essential in a context where culture is constantly undermined by the economic imperative and by the health crisis. 

We have also worked on concrete solutions to buy La Clef and continue this commitment independently. 

We manage a strong endowment fund of more than 100,000 euros in individual donations, and several pledges from various patrons. As we’ve already mentioned in a previous forum (here), this mode of acquisition would make it possible to buy the walls without impacting the current operation of the cinema. La Clef would remain independent and would no longer be a simple product of speculation on the property market. Its eclectic and collective programming, its practice of pay-what-you-can admission would be preserved in the long term, by ensuring that the place continues to be run as a non-profit association.

At the same time, we’ve succeeded in having our model accepted by institutions in the film industry. Thus, the pay-what-you-can projections that we've been making since the opening will be recognized by the CNC in the event of the legalization of our situation. The Studio 34 creation residency has enabled us to collaborate with many associations and production companies working to promote emerging creation, making La Clef a real matrix of the cinema of tomorrow. 

Finally, and this is our greatest pride, we have set up a collective, horizontal, and inclusive organization, representing an ideal of self-management. La Clef is more than a hundred volunteers who run the cinema by freeing themselves from the managerialist, sexist and racist schemes that too often govern the world of work. We say it again: everything opposes us to the potential buyer, Groupe SOS, a juggernaut of the so-called "social and consolidated" economy, led by the deputy director of La Republique En Marche, and working to transform the association-led environment into a lucrative business. For more information on this group, the evil methods of its leaders and the fundamental differences between this billionaire group and our collective, we invite you to read our previous forum (here).

From the beginning, and this is the lot of any occupation, our main problem has been the owner. It must be said that dialogue with the CFE-CGC has never been possible. We have sometimes been caricatured, portrayed as dangerous troublemakers, sometimes despised, our independence serving as a pretext to marginalize us. In its stubbornness to cede the building to the Groupe SOS, the leaders of this executive union have, it seems, never been able to grasp the importance that their own movie house has acquired since we’ve been occupying it. Or perhaps the race to the highest bidder is ahead of any ethical questioning.

Because in the current political climate, faced with the resurgence of fascism, the decline of public freedoms, the worsening of social inequalities, La Clef has become a vital island of emancipation, both for its spectators and for those who occupy it. If we organize sessions at pay-what-you-can admission, it is because we are, for the most part, precarious. If we project and produce queer, anti-racist, radical films, it is because they are works that resemble us. If we give so much space to emerging creation and to the most current stories, it is because we come from the same generation, which, from economic crisis to health crisis, refuses to resign itself.

At a time when the Police Department is carefully preparing our expulsion, we would like to address ourselves publicly to the CFE-CGC, to its executives but also to its members. 

Be aware that by expelling our collective, you are destroying more than two years of unprecedented cultural and creative effervescence, representing an artistic ideal for many local residents, film lovers, filmmakers and workers in film and the culture in general. Be aware that by abandoning the last association-run cinema in Paris to a billionaire group whose predatory practices are gradually undermining the associative milieu, your union is participating in the current reactionary offensive, always stifling a little more those who fight on a daily basis for more solidarity, inclusiveness, dignity.

The Occupants of the La Clef Cinema 

at 34 rue Daubenton, Paris 5th.

*

KINO SLANG is full of admiration for what LA CLEF REVIVAL has achieved: 

––The popular occupation and collective running of a disused Latin Quarter cinema, the red-marqueed LA CLEF (THE KEY)––a movie house with a great history of projecting ignored films from Africa and the Arab world under the tutelage of Sanvi Panou in the 90s, a movie house that stands in a Paris neighborhood extremely important to the history of film clubs, critics, theorists, film-goers, and filmmakers in France, in short: to the cinema. It must continue...

––LA CLEF REVIVAL's vital film programming over the past two years done in relay by its members, occupants, and invited filmmakers young and old. Film programming totally free of the scheming and possessiveness of so-called professional film curators, free of the hustling, hierarchies, corporate sponsorship and servitude of film festivals, and even free of fixed admission prices, practicing pay-what-you-can admission, encouraging participation and film-going for the young, unemployed, retired, underpaid.

––Their courage: When police told LA CLEF REVIVAL to pack up, they increased their cine-activity. All last week the screenings and forums became all-day affairs, from 11am (sometimes 6am!) until 11pm. Earlier last year, when the financial behemoth Groupe SOS offered to buy the property and allow LA CLEF REVIVAL to continue as it has, LA CLEF boldly refused (while quoting Brian De Palma: “Capitalism always goes about neutralizing a protesting force in the same way, it covers it with gold, and suddenly it's no longer protesting at all, and falls in line”), seeing and knowing (as we all do) the inevitable: that this would be precisely the rope with which to hang any autonomous community effort, any free cinema; that they would suddenly become employees of a sort, debtors and tenants for these particularly professional billion-euro restructurers; the original anti-profit impulse and foundation of protest would die, all would be lost. "Exit the movie usher, enter the managers," as LA CLEF put it.

––That "simple thing, so hard to achieve", so monstrously difficult in monstrous times: simply having and maintaining a neighborhood cinema, with popular support.

AN INJURY TO ONE (CINEMA) IS AN INJURY TO ALL (CINEMAS):

THIS IS TRUE ABOVE ALL IN CINEMA, WHERE ALL EFFORTS OF ALL COUNTRIES CONTRIBUTE TO THE SUSTENANCE OF THIS GREAT ART AND ITS POSSIBILITIES FOR KNOWLEDGE AND LIBERATION.

I SUPPORT LA CLEF REVIVAL CINEMA AND ITS PEOPLE, THEIR ASSOCIATION, THEIR OCCUPATION, AND THEIR CONTINUATION, WHICH IS TO SAY I AM AGAINST THEIR EVICTION AND THE ARRESTING OF THE CINEMA (EVERYWHERE!), AGAINST THE LANDOWNERS, SPECULATORS, AND POLICE WHO ENFORCE THEIR CRETINOUS RULE OF CAPITAL (EVERYWHERE!).

Signed,

Andy Rector

KINO  SLANG

Los Angeles

  

Thanks to Valérie Massadian  

for all updates + translation 

of LA CLEF's tribune