“The cinema will survive the platforms”

It is difficult to enter the office of Sidonie Dumas – general manager of the Gaumont house – without being touched by the thought that the daisy firm is stripping away one hundred and twenty-five years of cinema history. Founded in 1895 by Léon Gaumont, son of a coachman and a housekeeper, the company quickly became one of the greatest players in world cinema, neck and neck with its famous competitor at the rooster, founded by Charles Pathé, himself the son of a butcher. Long rivals, a century later they fell into the hands of the brothers Nicolas and Jérôme Seydoux, heirs to one of the greatest families of the French business bourgeoisie, the Schlumberger.

Of Vampires from Louis Feuillade (1915) to Untouchables (2011) by Olivier Nakache and Eric Tolédano via Louie (1980) by Maurice Pialat, the Gaumont unrolls a string of popular and artistic successes. In 2004, Nicolas Seydoux, at the helm since 1975, entrusted the reins of the company to his daughter, who was responsible for meeting the cinematographic challenges of the present time, which are not slim.

Emmanuel Macron announced the reopening of cinemas for May 19. Do the modalities suit you, with a 9 p.m. curfew, a 35% gauge, and a likely scramble between films?

We have suffered so much from this forced hibernation that we welcome this announcement with joy, even if the conditions are momentarily tight. The important thing is to finally have an opening date, a recovery plan, and to get us back in working order. With the help of the CNC and by dialoguing between us, we will smooth out these outputs and naturally find solutions so as not to overshadow ourselves.

At Gaumont we have eighteen films to be released. Among which Goodbye idiots by Albert Dupontel, who made 700,000 admissions in a week before being interrupted and that we want to resume on May 19. Then we will go out The sense of family, by Jean-Patrick Benes on June 30, then OSS 117, Red alert in black Africa, by Nicolas Bedos in August.

It will not be easy, but it will be necessary to put everything back in working order and regulate the outputs. I think that it is especially the small structures that are going to be in danger, and we will have to be attentive to it.

How have you been coping with this situation since March 2020?

I think it’s the first time in history that the life of cinema has come to a complete stop. This experience is both strange and distressing. The disaster, even if the CNC played a formidable role during this period, it is obviously the closure of the cinemas since October, because we estimate that there is no risk of clusters in the rooms. There was nevertheless a positive point for Gaumont, it is that the richness of the catalog allowed us to sell a lot of films on television during this period.

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