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Paris’ La Clef cinema is heading to New York.
Organizers behind the popular venue, one of Paris’ most enduring rep houses, are heading to New York this week to host a series of film screenings at cinemas across the city to connect with fellow cinephiles and raise funds for their ongoing redevelopment project back in Paris.
La Clef has been officially shut since 2019. The cinema was saved from permanent closure last year after Cinéma Revival, a group of local volunteers and longtime patrons of the cinema, purchased the building, which had been put on the market by its previous owner. The campaign to save La Clef was an almost five-year battle and began with a bold community occupation of the building, which grew into an international movement involving film industry figures, lawyers, activists, and government officials.
The group bought the building with €2 million raised through an online fundraising campaign. €400.000 was raised from 5000 individual donations with contributors including filmmakers and actors such as Wang Bing, Leos Carax, Céline Sciamma, Sophie Fillières, Agnès Jaoui, and Irène Jacob. The remaining cash was raised through an art sale, including a work donated by the late David Lynch, and a series of generous donations from patrons, including Pulp Fiction filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
The group is now aiming to raise between €400,000 to €500,000 to finish renovations and reopen in September. Work has been ongoing at the La Clef cinema site, which sits at the heart of Paris’s historic Left Bank district. The remaining work includes the removal of asbestos and electrical wiring.
The group’s New York sojourn begins Wednesday at Film Forum, where they will screen Jean-Luc Godard’s classic A Woman Is a Woman. They will also head uptown to Harlem to present Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré’s 2022 feature Crossing Voices, and over the Brooklyn Bridge to screen Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soualem at the Brooklyn Centre For Theatre Research.
“The point of the trip is to begin a new fundraising campaign in the U.S., and also to meet other cinephiles and people that could be interested in our story,” the group told us this morning ahead of their trip stateside.
“In New York, the situation with cinemas is just as bad. Many cinemas closed during Covid, so we thought our story could be a good one to share, and hopefully, we can build a community with people who might want to attempt a similar campaign.”
The La Clef movement has received a lot of love from U.S. filmmakers over the years. Back in 2023, just before the Cannes debut of Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese shared a video message followed by an op-ed in the French newspaper Libération voicing his support for the cinema. Halloween filmmaker John Carpenter also shared a video in support of the La Clef movement. And The Sweet East filmmaker Sean Price Williams was one of the many filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman, Céline Sciamma, and Leos Carax who visited the cinema when local volunteers and cinephiles occupied the building after it’s closure to host popular daily screenings and talks.
The group is now also taking tax deductible donations through Film Independent. Scroll down for La Clef’s full NYC screening schedule.
La Clef NYC Screenings
Wednesday March 5th
Film Forum
8 pm – A woman is a woman by Jean-Luc Godard (1960, 88’)
Synopsis: Angela, an afternoon stripper in the sleazy Zodiac Club, yearns for motherhood, but live- in boyfriend Jean-Claude Brialy “isn’t ready yet,” while hanger-on Jean-Paul Belmondo is more than happy to oblige.
Thursday March 6th
Anthology Film Archives
7.30 pm – Earthlight by Guy Gilles (1970, 98’)
Synopsis: Pierre, a young man who lives in Paris with his father, travels to his native Tunisia in search of his early childhood and distant memories, including that of his long-since- deceased mother.
Saturday March 8th
Spectacle Theater Brooklyn
7.30 pm – Dernier Maquis by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche (2008, 90’)
Synopsis: The owner of an industrial pallet and truck repair yard, nicknamed Mao by his Arab and African employees, tries to keep everyone happy and productive, as long as it doesn’t affect his bottom line. But the accord between labor and management goes awry when Mao creates a mosque in the yard.
Sunday March 9th
Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research
7.30 pm – Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soualem (2023, 82’)
Synopsis: Leaving her Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress, Hiam Abbass also left behind her mother, grandmother and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to journey through the vanished places among the scattered memories of four generations.
Monday March 10th
Maysles Documentary Center
7 pm – Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices) by Raphaël Grisey & Bouba Touré (2022, 122’)
Synopsis: Using rare archives, Crossing Voices recounts the adventure of Somankidi Coura, an agricultural cooperative created in Mali in 1977 by western African immigrant living in workers’ residencies in France. The story of this improbable, utopic return to the homeland follows a winding path through the ecological challenges and conflicts on the African continent from the 1970s to the present day.
Wednesday March 12th
Alliance New York
7 pm – The Temple Woods Gang by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche (2022, 116’)
Synopsis: A retired military man lives in the Temple Woods housing project. Just as he’s burying his mother, his neighbour Bébé, who belongs to a gang of robbers from the area, is preparing to rob the convoy of a wealthy Arab prince…
