La Cinematheque Francaise
A private institution, financed mainly by the State (Ministry of Culture and Communication through the French National Cinema Centre, CNC), the Cinémathèque Française is a non-profit association.
It has today almost 650 individual or corporate members, including directors, actors, researchers, critics, technicians, film enthusiasts, each of whom has deposited or donated a film artefact or document. Membership also allows depositors and donators to attend the General Assembly. They may vote for the renewable half of the Cinémathèque's Board of Directors. This Board comprises eighteen members elected by the General Assembly, each Director being handed a mandate of six years. The State nominates three qualified people and is represented by a government commissioner (the CNC Director General) and a financial comptroller. The Board of Directors elects the Executive, which is composed of the President and the Treasurer (for three years each), and one or more Vice-Presidents and Secretaries (for one year each). The Director General of the Cinémathèque française is nominated by the Board of Directors upon the President's counsel, after approval by the Minister for Culture and Communication.
The association's Statutes, modified during the Extraordinary General Assembly of 22 September, 2003, implemented a financial committee, a body with equal representation from the Cinémathèque and the State. It is presided over by the President of the Cinémathèque française.
The pedagogical section is for all ages, it aims at passing on a taste for the cinema by practicing it.
- The educative department
Showings for young people: discovering or rediscovering cinema with the family.
A regular program of presented and commentated films: themes, ?attractions?, shows.
Initiation
Guided tours of the 2 exhibition spaces;
?Journeys? (visit + showing/visit + workshop): visits ending with a showing or an experiment.
Introduction workshop to discover actively, the Cinémathèque's collections from a historical, technical, or film aesthetics point of view, lead by lecturers (showing of film extracts or practical approach).
Days at Bercy or ?inter-museums?.
Trainings
Pedagogical action aims also at taking part into the training of those who will teach cinema at school: training days at Bercy for teachers, mediator students, pupils, archivists, and librarians.
Actions in schools to develop cinematographic projects and film teaching
With the Cultural ministry, the education ministry, the DRAC, the regions, the rectorships, and the community aid, the pedagogical department is in interaction with a great number of schools.
Directing scenes workshops: ?Cinema, 100 years of youth?
Launched in 1995, this experimental and national plan of action, organized by the Cinémathèque implies cultural structures on the one hand (archives, movie theaters, education departments…), and cinema professionals, teachers and their pupils, from all school levels, and different horizons on the other hand. Through these directing workshops, children and adults work on the meaning of cinema, and write something about it.
Exchanging, sharing, passing on film enthusiasm, that is what ?Let's talk about movies? is about. This activity is about encountering the public with a few regular events, by evoking the relations between exhibitions and programming in France and elsewhere in the world.
Preserving and enriching the film heritage documents, ensuring it's broadcasting and it's apprehension by different categories of the population through a great number of services (from the media library to the website), those are the main tasks of the Film library. It will merge within the ?Cinémathèque française? on January 1st 2007.
The film library (BiFi) is the main center for documents on movies in France; students, researchers, teachers, journalists, film professionals, or film enthusiasts are offered a very rich collection of archives through a media library, a video library, an image library, an information and documents center, editions, and a web site.
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3 types of activities
The documents processing, from the entry of documents to the disposal of the public.
The documentary production, creation of documents, presentation of documents.
Cultural mediation, reception of the public, consultation.
- Library / Video library
Thanks to the important job accomplished by the BiFi in the treatment of its funds, today the public can look at:
18,000 posters, 10,500 costume and set drawings, 17,500 press reviews, 450,000 photos of shootings of more than 20,000 films and 6,000 directors, 18,700 books about movies, 467 periodic collections, 2,600 videos and 1,350 DVD's, 120 archive funds (opened to researchers by request).
The catalogue of the collections, a data base on cinema always enriched (films released in France since 1895, world wide famous movie stars), an electronic magazine on the cinematographic heritage, and several folders on internet (www.bifi.fr).
Practical informations
Metro: Bercy – Lignes 6 and 14
Temporary and permanent exhibitions:
During the week from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.,
open until 10 p.m. on Thursdays.
Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Projections and conferences
From Monday to Sunday
BiFi : Library-Multimedia library:
Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Closed on holidays.
Research section and Iconotheca
from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Closed on Tuesdays.
The BiFi is closed on Saturdays and Sundays.