Pierre Viot, a figure in the cultural world who was president of the Cannes Film Festival for more than fifteen years, died Thursday August 6 at the age of 95, his son told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The former advisor to the Court of Auditors had headed the Center national de la cinématographie (CNC) for more than ten years, from 1973 to 1984, before being elected in 1985 to the presidency of the Cannes Film Festival, replacing Robert Favre Le Bret.
“I lived a great passion, and this passion does not leave me”, he said sixteen years later to AFP at his last Festival, in June 2000. Cannes is first and foremost “Films and artists”, he insisted then before handing over to Gilles Jacob, until then General Delegate.
“From 1984 to 2000, I worked with Pierre Viot every day. He was our president and my dear accomplice. Protector of a united team, he brought nobility, moral elegance and a sense of the State to the Festival ”, Gilles Jacob reacted to AFP on Thursday. “His height of vision, his smiling lucidity, his class have left an indelible mark”, he added.
“75 years at the service of culture”
“Its history has crossed history: from the Resistance through the ENA to the Cinéfondation, its last functions”, told AFP his son, François Viot.
In Cannes, he was the “Legal, economic and moral guarantor of the Festival and at the same time the freedom of spirit to Gilles Jacob to bring the festival almost already in the XXIe century “, for his part commented the current president of the Festival, Pierre Lescure, greeting a man of “Senseless modernity”. More “Pierre Viot, it goes beyond the Cannes festival. It’s seventy-five years in the service of culture ”, he added, highlighting his work “Phenomenal” at the CNC where “He presided over the new dynamic of cinema financing”.
“It is with affection that I pay tribute to Pierre Viot, one of those who, with unabashed public commitment, made the history of the Festival de Cannes”, greeted the general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival, Thierry Frémaux.
In the 1980s, Pierre Viot, enarque passed through the senior civil service, also chaired the board of directors of the public establishment responsible for building the Opera Bastille.
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