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Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director

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Interview with the director of the film "Amélie" (2001)

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by Federico Greco

< Jean-Pierre Jeunet - director

"Amélie is a film about generosity. We have had enough of violent films and guns, but it’s not easy to talk about generosity. When Hollywood does that, the results are cloyingly sweet. I did not conceive of it as a hit. I made this film for myself. The sincerity explains the success of this film and also the fact that it is a romantic love story and not realistic. Young people don’t want to hear any more talk about condoms... "

Gilles Duval - the GAN Film Foundation

"Amélie is an excellent engine to bring French films to American theatres. We learned a lesson from American cinema: we managed to make a film that was both American and French at the same time, using the same instruments that American cinema has always used against us. "

Serge Kaganski – critic (Les Inrockuptibles)

"This is a coincidence: (in 2000-2002) French films that were not the usual caricature of a French film. By that I mean that they were not auteur-driven, inward-looking, small and intimate love stories that unfold in the maid’s room in the Latin Quarter but genre films with major backing."

Jacques Rozier – director

"Official doctrine state that French cinema is in the best of health, in terms of box office takes and market performance. Contrary to what you might think, the number of French films actually screened is tiny. Amélie was released onto 700 screens. The Asterix sequel onto 1000.Okay, that’s a lot of cinemas but there’s so little space left for the others. "

Mathieu Almaric – actor

"There are lots of films out there by directors the same age as me: middle-class intellectual Parisians. I ought to have a lot in common with them but I actually hate them with a passion. They are my enemies. Asterix and Obelix is not my enemy. I really want to see it".

Bertrand Bonello – director

"I did not experience any positive knock-on effect as a result of this success. I’d say the opposite was true, actually. "

Robert Guédiguian – director

"French cinema is successful at this type of operation because it applies protectionist tactics."

Claude Duty – director

"From the outside protectionism is slightly worrying. But that is the thing that allows us to make films that are different and are able to express themselves in ways that are completely different from the prevailing Hollywood role model. "

Pascal Thomas - director

"The cultural exception does not exist to protect ourselves but to avoid being invaded by a single film industry. Especially the Wall Street film industry. "

Robert Guédiguian – director

"When Titanic is a hit in France, it also contributes to financing French cinema. Protectionism – which is based on the concept of the cultural exception – is a self-finance system for world cinema. "

Serge Kaganski – critic (Les Inrockuptibles)

"A film or a book represent the soul of an artist and occasionally of an entire nation, culture and people. That is what cultural exception means: recognising that a film is not just a jar of jam or a washing machine. "

Antoine De Baecque – critic (Libération)

"The only way to renew this system is to export it... "

Robert Guédiguian – director

"It’s a discussion that goes way beyond cinema. And I still believe that we need to protect the weak from the strong. That is why I am a protectionist...! "

(interviews from the documentary entitled "New French Cinema" aired on RAISAT CINEMA in March 2001, by Federico Greco, Michela Greco, Altiero Scicchitano)

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