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On this page, you are being given des articles offerts par FRANCE TODAY et par LE JOURNAL FRANÇAIS, both of which are published
by http://www.francentral.com Immediately below here is an article on FILM and how the film industry in France is meeting
the demand to go online. At the very bottom of this page is a Url for an article concerning the traveler's delight, how to
find his lost luggage in France. And right here, you are given another Url for an article about les conducteurs de taxis en
France. Did you know that these folks must pass a rigorous spelling test, for instance, and that they must be quite well-read
and literate en français, which is often not their native language? Check it out:
http://www.journalfrancais.com/archives/non_abonnes/accent_francais/98-12-01.html
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Vive le cinéma français? THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE HAS BEEN REPRINTED WITH THE PERMISSION OF FRANCE TODAY. www.francetoday.com
Cinema
"Let's Go to the Movies Online"
[WORDS] 858
[BYLINE] by Isabelle Boucq
Very few French movies make it to theaters, TV screens or video rental outlets in the United States. So the emergence
of several Web sites showing French flicks is good news:
Three French Web sites have bet that movie lovers
around the world want to watch movies on their computers. LiberaFilms (www.liberafilms.com) and PrimeFilm (www.primefilm.com)
attract their audiences with short movies and independent feature-length movies that are not available anywhere else. They
deal directly with the producers, studios or directors to get authorization to show their movies on the Web. NetCiné (www.netcine.com),
a site backed by French movie studio Pathé, has the more ambitious objective of showing mainstream movies six months after
their theatrical release.
The two founders of LiberaFilms, Stéphane Dottelonde and Eric Név, know the movie industry;
they're film producers. LiberaFilms's catalog currently contains about 160 short films and 80 feature-length ones, most of
them shot by little-known directors. For example, Laurent Heynemann's La Torture, a feature-length fictional film about torture
in Algeria during the war for independence, has recently been popular on LiberaFilms."We don't claim to compete with
theaters and video clubs. We are an alternative way to watch films," says Dottelonde, adding, "Right now, about
450 people each day download one of our movies. They write to us from Hong Kong and Oklahoma to tell us how happy we made
them." It's worthwhile to check this site regularly, because new films are constantly added.
Dottelonde's most
recent coup was convincing Robert Gudiguian, the director of the hit mainstream film Marius et Jeannette, to give the Internet
a shot. LiberaFilms is now showing four of Gudiguian's movies: Dernier t, Rouge Midi, Ki Lo Sa? and Dieu Vomit les Tides.
Occasionally LiberaFilms shows independent movies shortly before they are released in theaters as a way to build word-of-mouth.
For audiences in the United States, these limited-time-only showings are probably the only way ever to catch most of these
movies, which are unlikely to be distributed in the U.S.
PrimeFilm is like a neighborhood theater, organizing retrospectives
and other movie-related events. With the sponsorship of French daily Libération, the site is currently organizing its second
short-film festival, which any director can enter by sending in a tape. Viewers around the world will choose the winner. Its
recent Mois du Cinéma Invisible (Invisible Cinema Month) showcased 10 feature-length movies that are not available anywhere
else.
The site currently offers only French shorts and feature-length movies, but plans to offer international films
soon. PrimeFilm founder Thierry Boscheron contributed his own Sur un Air d'Autoroute, a film he directed last year. There
are about 15 new movies coming out in theaters every week in France. But 80 percent of them only stay for a couple of weeks
and then theyre gone. The public doesn't get a chance to see them, Boscheron says. He intends to give them a chance. International
visitors can watch the short films for free. But you'll need a French credit card to access the pay-per-view feature-length
movies. Producers imposed this condition to improve their bargaining power should they attempt to sell their movies on certain
foreign markets. PrimeFilm hopes that this restriction will be temporary.
Of the three sites, NetCiné has the potential
for the widest audience. We want to become an online video club, says Loc Adler, its founder. For now, NetCiné is showing
old movies such as the 1945 classic Les Enfants du Paradis (directed by Marcel Carn and written by poet Jacques Prévert) and
several action films featuring actor Alain Delon. NetCiné's claim that it will have movies online six months after the theatrical
release seems unrealistic, because the strictly regulated movie-release schedule doesn't yet take online distribution into
account. (Video release is allowed six months after theatrical release, and network broadcasts are permitted only when the
movie has been out for 36 months.)
So far, directors and studios are reluctant to authorize the showing of their movies
online because they are afraid of being pirated or not receiving their share of the profits. So the choice of movies is limited.
There are also some technical difficulties with watching movies online. First, watching a movie requires a broadband connection
such as DSL or cable. The image is quite small and not TV-quality yet, so viewers can't sit back quite as comfortably as they
could in front of the TV. What makes it all worthwhile is that movies you could never have rented before come directly to
your PC, either for free or for a few dollars (from $2.50 to $3.50 for a one- or two-day rental).
Despite these difficulties,
LiberaFilms, PrimeFilm and NetCiné may well have started something big, and the competition is paying attention. TF1.fr, the
Internet arm of the French TV network TF1, and Wanadoo, the Internet access provider owned by France Télécom, have both promised
to have a movie rental service on their Web sites before the end of the year.
[BIO] Isabelle Boucq writes for
the computer magazine L'Ordinateur Individuel and for Le Figaro. She is the San Francisco Chronicle correspondent in Paris.
"450 people each day download one of our movies. They write to us from Hong Kong and Oklahoma to tell us
how happy we made them."
Stéphane Dottelonde, LiberaFilms co-founder
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN REPRINTED
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