Martin Scorsese Gets Behind Rescue Plan For La Clef Cinema In Paris As Activists Announce Breakthrough
deadline.comMartin Scorsese has re-voiced his support for Paris’s La Clef community cinema, following news that activists fighting to save the venue have secured the right to buy the site.
The battle to keep the 50-year-old cinema up and running has been supported by a raft of local cineastes, such as Céline Sciamma, Mathieu Amalric, Léos Carax and Agnès Jaoui, and also captured the attention of filmmakers and cinephiles worldwide. “La Clef must remain a cinema,” wrote Scorsese in an open letter posted on the site of France’s Libération newspaper. “Why should we be moved by the disappearance of one more cinema?
Because it matters,” he continued. “Every room counts; each room bears the traces of all the people who have gathered there to watch a silent film by Lubitsch, a classic by Souleymane Cissé, or the latest film by Paul Thomas Anderson or Alice Rohrwacher, among countless other films and retrospectives. “Think of all those film lovers who met under the halo of a projector.
And the story of La Clef must be preserved all the more preciously because it has been brought to life by people who have come together for the love of cinema and the freedom that comes with it.” Scorsese’s open letter comes on the eve of his upcoming trip to France for the world premiere of Killers Of The Flower Moon at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
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