What is it ?
Cinéma Revival is an endowment fund(1).
This legal structure, between foundation and association, allows to collect donations, gifts and legacies within the framework of a mission of general interest.
Cinéma Revival aims at preserving and developing associative cinemas, supporting independent and/or militant creation, encouraging mutual aid, sharing experiences and networking, supporting professionalization, facilitating access to independent cinematographic works for the most precarious.
To achieve this goal, Cinema Revival buys buildings in the cinema community, without a system of shares or stocks. It grants full use of the premises to non-profit associations that will manage the cinema collectively with a horizontal operation.
With Cinéma Revival, the building leaves the real estate market, the cinema becomes a common good. These spaces of creation and diffusion become accessible to all and protected from real estate speculation.
Open prices, collective programming, creation spaces at solidarity prices, diffusion of films that are weakened by a mercantile exploitation system… Everything becomes imaginable when the price of the square meter is adapted to the economic function of the place.
- Articles of association approved by the founding Board of Directors in Paris, on 21/09/2020 ↩︎
The fund is managed by a board made of a college of usage-members, drawn from the collectives that uses the building, owned by the fund, and a college of professionals from the cinema or alternative venues. The latter is currently made up of director Céline Sciamma (film director), Jean-Marc Zekri (who runs the Reflet Médicis’ cinema in Paris), and Laurent Tenzer (member of Brussels’ Cinema Nova).
Latest news about Cinéma Revival
A huge collective effort, you can barely see !
The fight to reopen La Clef is a huge collective effort, which is not always visible! Of course, there’s the collection of donations and the bank loan’s negotiation to finance the purchase of the cinema before the end of March…
Why buying La Clef?
La Clef screenig-rooms are full of stories. For 50 years, programmers, exhibitors, viewers, filmmakers and associations have shown and discovered films here. Those are almost always comitted, often rare and sometimes invisible. The building has also hosted a pizzeria, family…
The sale continues!
The exhibition-sale “Tout doit disparaître” (Everything must go) was a wild adventure and a great success: over two thousand people visited it during the two days it was on display, and 50 pieces of art – half of all those…
The Collective La Clef Revival and Cinéma Revival: are they the same thing?
La Clef Revival is the association that occupies the cinema La Clef in the 5th arrondissement, the last associative cinema in Paris. Since September 2019, the association collectively manages the whole place and ensures the independence and freedom of the cinema.
Cinéma Revival is an endowment fund. Its objective is written in its statutes: “To preserve and develop the associative, independent, open to all and non-profit cinemas”. Cinéma Revival acquires the cinemas and leaves the use of them to the associations that manage them (like the association La Clef Revival).
Do sponsors become owners of the site?
An endowment fund is a structure without shares. The directors are in place only to ensure that the statutes are respected and are in no way the owners of the property. The donors, patrons, bring financial gifts or donations, which will allow the acquisition of the building in question (see the explanation in the next question). Making a donation does not give the donor any say or decision-making power over the property purchased. It is the users who have the governance of the place and not the donors. To get involved in the La Clef cinema project more specifically, you can join the team of volunteers at La Clef Revival who welcome the public, program and screen films.
Why not choose to set up a system in which the people who donate become the owners of the place (e.g. an SCI, a SCIC, a SCOOP, etc.)?
The SCI was a form considered by the collective that occupies La Clef. In our opinion, such a structure does not allow us to go far enough in the process of independence and community.
Cinéma Revival was born out of this desire to take the La Clef cinema out of the real estate market and find an alternative to the idea of a private property managed by several groups or individuals who would own it.
In the Cinema Revival endowment fund, there is no longer any individual or group of owners. The administrators of the fund are not the owners of the property and exist only for the good management of the fund and to ensure that its statutes are respected: to preserve and develop non-profit, independent, and open to all cinemas.
If the Cinéma Revival endowment fund collects the expected sum and acquires the place, it will make the cinema available to the association La Clef Revival which will be totally independent in the management of the place while respecting the statutes of Cinéma Revival. And if the association were to disappear, the Cinéma Revival endowment fund would have the role of setting up a new association with the same vocation.
For information, several collective farms and ZADs throughout France have chosen this way of operating in order to have total freedom and to think differently about the notion of property. We are inspired for example by the Foncière Antidote.
When we say that La Clef should belong to everyone, it is not about the ownership of the building, but about its open operation. The cinema is a property of use and its governance is up to the people who invest themselves, who make La Clef live, who participate in the decisions and not to the people who have given money. We therefore invite you to become active members of the association and to participate in the different meetings of programming, organization… so that La Clef becomes the common good we all dream of.
How will La Clef, or the theaters acquired by Cinema Revival, become a common good?
The user association will be able to act independently of the owner structure. For example, if we follow the functioning of the association: La Clef has the vocation to be open to everyone, everyone can watch a film there, and everyone can participate in the management of the place by joining the association. The programming is not subject to any influence, except the one that agitates our hearts of cinephiles 🙂
How can I get involved in the Cinema Revival project?
By contributing to the fundraising campaign! And by following our different meetings around these issues (link to radio, conference and web-tv to come).
How can I get involved in the activities of La Clef Cinema?
By participating in all the actions led by the collective, as a spectator or by becoming a volunteer.
Will the rates and programming change after the cinema buyout?
No, the sessions will remain free of charge and the drinks at a fixed price but accessible.
What is the open price?
For us, the open price is a social, cultural and political approach. Different from free or fixed price, the open price allows to make the sessions accessible to everyone.
A vector of solidarity, the open price allows everyone to give as they wish or can; the donations of the most affluent allow the most precarious to access the programs.