20/10/2003

Raids in the cinemas, in the institutions and on the small screen. After causing the cancellation of various summer festivals, the French entertainment artists’ are now launching a series of spectacular media stunts in protest against the new law which will come into force at the start of 2004. They have already laid siege to big multi-screen complexes and the main French TV broadcasts.

There are 30,000 entertainment artists working in the cinema, audiovisual and radio sectors (out of a total of 100,000). Many production companies abuse the state assistance for entertainment artists, only issuing temporary contracts during the year. Following the request by minister Aillagon, this practice is to disappear, but it will remain in the private sphere, which oversees almost all the French TV programmes.
On October 15, groups of entertainment artists’ occupied various multi-screen cinemas in Paris, including the MK2 Bibliothèque and the UGC-Bercy, taping up the box office tills with stickers and letting people into the morning screenings for free. On Saturday they moved to the broadcast studios for the Star Academy programme on TF1, (6 million viewers): they raided the studios while the programme was live on air, and intended to read a prepared text, but there was a violent reaction from the security staff, and the programme was interrupted. So, the conflict is becoming increasingly bitter, also on the legal front. The government thinks that everything has already been signed sealed and delivered, but for the many entertainment artists who constitute the major part of the French audiovisual industry, the game isn’t over yet.

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(Translated from French)