A defiant DIAGONALE
"The distribution, promotion and visibility of auteur cinema": these are the objectives of DIAGONALE, according to its president André Ceuterick, director of the Festival du film d’amour and the Plaza Art cinema in Mons.
Presented at a press conference by the Secretary General of the Communauté française de Belgique, Henri Ingberg and the Minister of Culture Fadila Laanan, DIAGONALE is a project that has been in the pipeline for several months now and was officially inaugurated today.
Under the DIAGONALE name, nine arthouse theatres in French-speaking Belgium (Mons, Liege, Namur, Charleroi and five in Brussels) – which last year attracted 800,000 filmgoers – have created this network.
Their objectives are four-fold: to create a space of reflection and synergy that will allow for the presentation of the greatest number of auteur films possible, in order to battle it out with the US distribution steamroller; to implement strategies of mutual and complementary communication; to play a more important role in exhibition; and to counter the ever-changing situation of prints, offering "time to cinema".
Minister Laanan described the endeavour as a "militant task requiring much commitment and a public service mission to provide access to culture".
With a €100,000 budget from the Communauté française, the first project to be supported by DIAGONALE will be Aki Kaurismakï’s new film Lights of the Dusk [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which is being released by Coopérative Nouveau Cinéma (CNC) .
Meetings with Peter van Bagh, the presentation of a biography of Kaurismakï, preview screenings with the film’s lead actress Mari Järvenhelmi, a retrospective of Finnish films and an exhibition are some of the several events taking place from December 13 at the DIAGONALE cinemas where Lights in the Dusk will have its premiere in all nine theatres simultaneously, which is a first.
The Flemish region may organise a similar event in the future, and since DIAGONALE is based on France’s AFCAE project, Ingberg has said that the project should be developed on a European level.
(Translated from French)
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