14/03/2006

The professional organisations representing cinema and the audiovisual industry signed a film charter with the city of Paris yesterday. The French capital welcomed 662 shoots in 2005, most notably 100 features, 90 shorts, 150 television films and programmes and 54 documentaries.

Among the films that chose to use the "City of Light" as a backdrop were 11 foreign features, including Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code, Steven Spielberg’s Munich, Marie-Antoinette by Sofia Coppola, Stephen Frears’s The Queen and Reprise by Norwegian Joachim Trier.

French productions shot in Paris include Francis Veber’s The Valet [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (to be released March 29), Ne le dis à personne (lit. “Tell No One”) by Guillaume Canet , Truands by Frédéric Schoendoerffer, Claude Chabrol’s Comedy of Power [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the collective film Paris je t'aime (see news), which will open Un Certain Regard and the next Cannes Film Festival, as well as Danielle Thompson’s Orchestra Seats [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Quelques jours en Septembre (lit. "Several Days in September") by Santiago Amigorena, J'ai vu tuer Ben Barka (lit. "I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed") by Serge Le Péron, Presentiment by Jean Pierre Darroussin and Jardins en automne (lit. "Gardens in Autumn") by Otar Iosseliani.

This proliferation of shoots (an average of ten per day) encouraged the city to institute a charter agreement with producers to define a number of tariffs (including rentals and specific reductions in parking fees for locations belonging to the city). The agreement was made between Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, the Film Producers Trade Union (CSPF), the Independent Producers Union (SPI), the Film Producers Union (UPF), the Civil Society of Authors, Directors and Producers (ARP), the Association of Independent Producers (API), and the Audiovisual Production Trade Union (USPA).

With the seventh art a major element in showing off the French capital around the world, a guide to shooting in Paris will also be supplied to production companies and a database of the locations available will be available in a year. In fact, according to a survey, six out of ten film tourists said the films they saw made them want to come to France.

(Translated from French)