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How squatters brought cinema back to life in Paris

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The Key is in ParisIn the age of the smartphone and YouTube, the process is cheaper – and the audience can vary.

Every art form needs an open mic night. A place to learn and listen, to experiment and hone the craft without the inevitable pressures of commerce, of a general audience and the guardians of their hurt sentiments ruining a work, made for its own sake. For filmmakers, such spaces are the hardest to find: It used to take a team, equipment and considerable funds to make even the smallest film. In the age of the smartphone and YouTube, the process is cheaper – and the audience can vary. The hope for the filmmaker-as-artist, though, is alive in its birthplace. In Paris, lies The Key.

In 2019, a group of young filmmakers, students and enthusiasts occupied Le Clef (The Key), once an iconic art house cinema that screened the emerging New Wave films in the ’70s, and from the colonies — Asia and Africa — in the next decades. It was set to close down, after being sold when the group began squatting there, screening films — from the classics to the experimental — even projecting them onto the walls of buildings in the historic Latin Quarter, where the theatre is located, during the pandemic. The squatters made sure the building was never empty, ensuring it survived. Now, they are back – as owners. After raising enough funds, including from filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese, they are refurbishing the theatre.

Le Clef marks a rare victory for the collective — the squatters and broader society — in an age of profit. Every member of the erstwhile occupiers has a key to the premises, and patrons are expected to “pay what they can” to watch films. It is also a space for independent filmmakers to show their work. In the age of Marvel and billion-dollar budgets, it is a French resistance worth the name.

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