Sawt Falasteen - Last collective-run Paris cinema saved

After several years of work, the collective announced they had bought La Clef in the city's Latin Quarter for 2.7 million euros ($2.9 million).

Established in the 1970s, La Clef is one of the last independent cultural places remaining in the area, which is packed with students from the Sorbonne University but has seen its intellectual haunts largely driven out by high real-estate prices.

Another former film-going mecca in the city, the Champs-Elysees, has seen several landmark cinemas close as the street becomes dominated by fashion stores and tourist traps, with the famed UGC Normandie closing its doors last week.

La Clef forged a niche by highlighting African, Asian and South American filmmakers rarely programmed elsewhere.

The collective vowed it would stay true to that mission: "a place for showing rare films."

"Those who wish can join the collective, learn how to organise a screening and propose a film," they said.

In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the cinema projected a film on to the side of a building for locked-down residents in nearby apartments.

La Clef was under threat for some six years after its owners, a bank subsidiary, decided to sell the premises.

But multiple occupations, political standoffs and petitions eventually paid off.

Scorsese lent his support to the movement last year, with a video and a column in French newspaper Liberation titled "La Clef must remain a cinema".

The movement was able to raise two million euros in donations (with the rest borrowed from a bank), including through an art sale at the Palais de Tokyo to which the US director David Lynch contributed.

Tarantino and several French filmmakers, including Mathieu Amalric, Leos Carax and Celine Sciamma, were among the key donors.

After a short four-day re-opening next week, the collective must then raise another 600,000 euros over the coming year to bring the venue, with its dilapidated walls and tired seats, up to mandatory standards.

T.Khatib--SF-PST