Sophie Seydoux and Jérôme Seydoux

Sophie Seydoux, president of the Jérôme-Seydoux Pathé Foundation, and Jérôme Seydoux, president of Pathé, are the guests of honor at the MIFC. 

MMORTALITY
Sophie Seydoux: The Jérôme-Seydoux Pathé Foundation is dedicated to preserving our collective memory. Whether it’s screenplays, on-set photographs or poster art, we always try to follow a film from the very beginning. We keep one physical object from each shoot, so we have these little tangible mementos.

Jérôme Seydoux: People have been predicting the extinction of movie theaters for a long time now, ever since the days of the Lumière brothers! In my opinion, cinema can weather any storm, no matter what happens. Because today, in a society where people are highly individualistic, we still need to come together.
 

INTERNATIONAL
Jérôme Seydoux: The rollout of Pathé movie theaters in France is nearly complete. Development is now underway abroad. It's important to consider the rest of the world. After all, Charles Pathé had envisioned an international scope from the outset. We’ve already started building movie theaters in Morocco and things are going very well; we plan on opening a new cinema every year. This past August, which was an exceptional month in terms of attendance, the theater in Casablanca posted record numbers! In the future, we’ll probably look toward the rest of the North African region or Asia to expand.

INNOVATION
Jérôme Seydoux: The secret of high movie attendance is simple: cinemas that perform best in terms of ticket sales are the most modern, technologically advanced and the most expensive. We need to continue to innovate. Moviegoers, especially young people, want a top-tier experience. Price isn’t really a determining factor for them. For The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan, we installed a 70 mm projector at the movie theater in Montpellier–the only one of its kind in France. That cinema continues to screen the film, and it’s sold out every day, regardless of the showtime. People come from everywhere in France and from all over the world. If you offer the audience something exceptional, they’ll come.

THE ROLE OF AI 

Sophie Seydoux: I can’t even imagine agreeing to make or restore a film using artificial intelligence. At the Jérôme-Seydoux Pathé Foundation, we would never allow ourselves to add an image that is produced using special effects. We must accept the director’s œuvre as it is, without modifying it. There have been many instances where we’ve left a damaged negative as is, rather than reconstructing an image that didn’t originally exist.

FILM-TO-FILM

Sophie Seydoux: When a film is restored and digitized, it’s absolutely imperative to transfer it back to film. Film has a shelf life of 120 years. We don’t know how long digital formats will last, and as technology evolves, many elements can easily disappear, so we must be especially vigilant.

— Reported by Fanny Bellocq