Film Society - France

France

The term "film club" appears for the first time in April 1907 with the creation of Edmond Benoit-Lévy's "Film club." Located at the 5 Montmartre boulevard in Paris, it is to preserve and place at the disposal of its members all the cinematographic documents and productions existing. It is also equipped with a room of projection.

The Italian film theoretician Ricciotto Canudo who had been living in Paris since 1921 founded one of the first film societies.

After the first world war the film director and film critic Louis Delluc founded one of the first film societies and the important film magazine Cinéa.

In 1930 Jean Vigo founded the first film club in Nice, les Amis du Cinéma. In 1935 Henri Langlois and Georges Franju founded the film society Cercle du cinéma which became the Cinémathèque française in 1936 to show and to preserve old films.

After the second world war the movement of ciné-clubs boomed. In 1945 the film society of Annecy was founded from which originated the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. In 1948 André Bazin together with Jean-Charles Tacchella, Doniol-Valcroze, Astruc, Claude Mauriac, René Clément and Pierre Kast founded the avantgarde film society Objectif 49. Jean Cocteau became its president. This film society became the cradle of the Nouvelle Vague. Objectif 49 organized the Festival du Film Maudit which took place in Biarritz in 1949.

François Truffaut has depicted vividly Bazin's engagement in the cinéclub-movement:

"During the first days of our friendship - it was about 1947 - I had the chance of accompanying him at his film presentations and observing him who he projected two short films of Chaplin - first in a dominican monastery and two days later to the workers in a metal factory in their short break between their lunch and their return to their workbenches. At both occasions he managed to inspire his audience and to draw everybody into the discussion."

The first French film society exclusively women was founded in the 1970s in Toulouse.

Im 2005 the Musée Dapper in Paris founded the first film society entirely concentrating on the cinema of Africa, the Caribbean and the African-American diaspora - the occasion being the celebration of 50 years of African Cinema.