Former French Tradition Minister Frédéric Mitterrand, who was a high-profile and typically controversial determine on France’s cultural scene, died on Thursday on the age of 76, his household introduced.
Born in Paris in 1947 to a well-to-do household, Mitterrand was the nephew of President Fraņçois Mitterrand.
His many actions throughout half a century included trainer, arthouse cinema proprietor, cinema and tradition commentator, TV presenter, producer and documentary-maker.
He first gained notoriety on France’s cultural scene because the proprietor of the bohemian arthouse cinema L’Olympic in Paris’ then down-at-heel 14th arrondissement.
After a short time as a geography and historical past trainer, he acquired the theater in 1971 on the age of twenty-two with the assistance of a mortgage from the daddy of one in every of his former pupils.
It took on a folkloric standing for its blended clientele of locals, cinephiles, neighborhood hoodlums, drag queens and the occasional movie star and auteur director of the time.
Over the course of the following 15 years, Mitterrand constructed a small arthouse circuit underneath the L’Olympic banner however misplaced the lot in 1986 because of monetary mismanagement.
Mitterrand’s entry into exhibition sector had been spurred by a life-time fascination with cinema and a want to make movies himself.
He achieved the latter ambition in 1981 with first movie From Somalia With Love (Lettres d’amour en Somalie), a hybrid work capturing Somalia with a voiceover of affection letters written to a misplaced lover.
His different credit included the 1995 musical movie Madame Butterfly, which was acquired by Sony Photos Classics for U.S., in addition to bio-docs dedicated to Grace Kelly, Lana Turner and Christian Dior.
On the similar time, Mitterrand was constructing a profession as a cinema and tradition TV commentator, kicking off with Etoiles et Toiles on TF1. It was the primary of a dozen primarily cinema-themed exhibits throughout the Eighties and 90s.
Within the 2000s, he began to tackle extra institutional roles.
His carried out cultural missions in Tunisia and Morocco and was briefly the top of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici in 2008, earlier than being appointed Minister of Tradition and Communications underneath the centre-right authorities of François Fillon and presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Surviving the function from 2009 to 2012, he was one in every of France’s longest serving tradition ministers within the excessive turnover put up.
Sarkozy’s then new spouse Carla Bruni is reported have endorsed Mitterrand.
He later stated he barely knew the previous mannequin and singer, however urged their mates in widespread, filmmaker and mannequin Farida Khelfa and trend icon Inès de la Fressange, might have helped his case.
Mitterrand was additionally one of many nation’s first overtly homosexual public figures and ministers, publicly popping out along with his 2005 loosely, autobiographical novel A Unhealthy Life.
This work would land him in sizzling water after far-right politician Marine Le Pen condemned him a number of months into his ministership in 2009 for a passage wherein the narrator talks about paying for intercourse with boys throughout a visit to Thailand.
Mitterrand was already within the eye of a political storm having sparked anger for an impassioned speech in defence of Roman Polanski a number of weeks earlier, following the director’s detention at Zurich airport on the request of the U.S. authorities in relation to excellent 1977 rape fees.
He clung on to his put up amid requires his resignation making a public assertion vehemently denying he had paid for intercourse with underage boys and dismissing claims that the e-book justified intercourse tourism.
Mitterrand, who died after a brief battle with most cancers, remained a high-profile determine proper up till the top of his life. His remaining work was a biography of Brad Pitt, entitled Brad, for whom Mitterrand had an extended held ardour.
As a part of the promotional marketing campaign, which was was printed on the similar as he introduced his most cancers analysis within the spring of 2023, Mitterrand dressed up because the star for a Paris Match picture shoot.
“I wrote a e-book about Brad Pitt as a result of I like him. He has the fragility of actual males who understand how troublesome life is. Intervals of darkish despair – I’ve them too. Writing about him is a approach of sharing them” he defined on the time.
“I don’t know him, he doesn’t know me, we’ve by no means met, however possibly he’ll pause for a minute when he discovers this message in a bottle, realizing that he has a good friend someplace in France who likes him, admires him, and understands him.”
