Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Céline Sciamma and many other cinema lovers have saved a long-standing community cinema in Paris. Since its opening in 1973, Cinéma La Clef has been striving for an affordable, independent movie offer. The last five years, however, have proven to be very difficult.
Not long after the creation of La Clef by Claude Frank-Forter, the cinema was sold to the French banking institution Caisse d’Epargne. The rent was kept very low, but, amongst others due to its prime location in Paris’ fifth arrondissement, the bank decided to sell the building in 2018 and thereby effectively evicted the organisation from its premises.
After multiple actions taken by Cinéma Revival, the activist group wanting to save the venue, a fundraiser was eventually launched. 2.7 million euros were raised, 400,000 of which came from an online fundraising campaign backed by David Lynch and Céline Sciamma, just to name a few.
The rest of the funds came from two anonymous donors and none other than filmmaker Quentin Tarantino – who met two of the members of Cinéma Revival during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Tarantino, a known supporter of physical cinema locations, already has two movie theatres in Los Angeles: New Beverly Cinema and the Vista Theatre on Sunset Boulevard.
“He was really interested in the project and then sent us a mysterious email saying ‘How much do you need to get the cinema?’,” the group told Deadline. “The subject of the email was: ‘This is Quentin Tarantino.’ And then at the end, it said, ‘sent from my iPad.’ He asked how much we needed and then covered it all. That allowed us to complete the financing.”
As far as the future of La Clef goes, the cinema will remain closed for a year in order to carry out much-needed renovations to the building. 600,000 euros still need to be found in order to make that possible. It will then reopen, including a bar and three film post-production rooms which will be for rent and thus bring in funds allowing to run the cinema. Two employees will see to the for-hire business, while volunteers will continue to run the programming.
“The cinema remains community-run, relying on volunteers with complete political, cultural, and economic autonomy”, Cinéma Revival told Deadline. “The fund owns the building but it has no say in how the cinema is run. We have created a structure that has no shareholders, so the people who gave us money have no say in how the cinema is run. That’s how we preserve the independence of the cinema.”
