entretien / ART & ENTREPRENeuRIAT

samuel thiebaut

Directeur et cofondateur de Oléo Films,
directeur artistique du festival Jazz à Porquerolles

Director and co-founder of Oléo Films,
Artistic Director of Jazz à Porquerolles Festival

« Le rôle du monde de l’audiovisuel, c’est de donner aux citoyens les armes pour distinguer le vrai du faux, pour lutter contre les fake news et l’ignorance fabriquée, pour accepter la complexité du monde.  »

You clearly have a deep passion for music. Yet the way you’ve chosen to express that passion is by building a bridge through film, directing music documentaries and concert films. How did you come to combine the art of filmmaking with music ?

There are several reasons. The most obvious is a frustration I share with many jazz lovers : Charlie Parker, one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, was never properly filmed performing live. Part of what has driven me is the desire to make up for that loss by devoting so much energy to filming the artists I consider the most important of our time, creating time capsules for future generations.

At a time when the vast majority of cameras are pointed at stories that are anxiety-inducing and quickly forgotten, I want to point at least a few of them toward the artists who have the most meaningful things to express—so they won’t be forgotten, and so our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to hear and see how music was played in the early twenty-first century.

The other, decisive reason was meeting Frank Cassenti in 2002. He opened the door to this world for me. At the time, I couldn’t afford tickets to clubs or festivals, and filming concerts gave me direct access to the heart of the music. Filming a concert demands intense, active listening. It creates a sense of focus and anticipation, the feeling of being as close as possible to that magical act of creation. It was the ultimate dream.

You are the co-founder and managing director of the production company Oléo Films. What are the company’s main activities ? What is your role within the company ?

My primary role is to champion the place of the music I love on television. That is only possible because of the unique—and both precious and fragile—balance created by France’s cultural exception policy. I depend entirely on public broadcasters and on the French National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC). It’s important to talk about this because this model is under threat, and I sometimes feel as though I’m living in a world that no longer exists. I’ve been able to film hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of concerts because I came along at a time when the cost of producing high-quality live concert recordings had dropped dramatically, and public broadcasters such as Arte and France Télévisions were launching platforms dedicated to the performing arts. As early as 2010, I proposed a concert series to Arte based on a simple idea : if you want to understand what jazz is, you have to capture it live, at festivals, because each festival offers its own definition of jazz. At Sons d’Hiver, you hear things you won’t hear at Jazz à Vienne. At Jazzdor, you’ll discover artists who aren’t featured at the Django Reinhardt Festival. In other words, if you want to understand jazz, you have to travel from festival to festival, selecting the concerts that best represent each event and the original productions they bring to life. That’s how we ended up at Sons d’Hiver to film the operatic adaptation of ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’, and why we’ve also traveled to Uzeste, Le Mans, Brest, and many other festivals across France.

And what is the scope of its work across mainland France and the French overseas territories ?

We film concerts all across France, as well as throughout Europe. Poland, for example, has an incredible passion for jazz. As for the French overseas territories, we’ve occasionally filmed at the Martinique Jazz Festival, which is a true gathering place for the remarkable musicians of the French Caribbean and the wider Caribbean, from Guadeloupe to Haiti.

Oléo Films has filmed concerts at the Sons d’hiver Festival on several occasions in the past, notably for France Télévisions. That seems to happen much less frequently today—or not at all. More broadly, there appears to be a significant decline in the number of jazz concert recordings being commissioned. How do broadcasters make their programming decisions ? What criteria do they consider ?

The appetite of television broadcasters for jazz has definitely declined. There are several interconnected reasons for this.

First, audience numbers. That’s the number one metric for broadcasters. Even though they are public service media organizations, they are still evaluated largely on the size of their audience. When a program attracts fewer than 3,000 views, it’s easy for critics to argue that there’s no real demand for it and that public money is being wasted.

Of course, that’s open to debate. One of the core missions of public service media is to promote and protect cultural diversity—to « make humanity’s greatest works, and first and foremost those of France, accessible to as many French people as possible, » as André Malraux stated in the founding charter of France’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs.

Today, however, the first thing a programming executive looks at is an artist’s social media following or the number of their monthly listeners on Spotify.

Second, economics. To give you a sense of the numbers, YouTube pays somewhere between €500 and €3,000 for one million views of a long-form video. By those market standards, none of my productions are financially viable.

Producing a high-quality concert film remains expensive. It typically requires a crew of between five and fifteen highly skilled technicians. As a result, filming a concert is almost always a money-losing proposition unless it reaches ten or fifteen million views—which virtually never happens for the kinds of music we work with.

To uphold the mission of making humanity’s great artistic works accessible to the widest possible audience, public broadcasters such as France Télévisions and Arte continue to invest in financing these productions. The challenge today is that their budgets are shrinking. France Télévisions, for example, has been required to cut €200 million over a two-year period. Those budget reductions ripple through the entire ecosystem.

On my end, the volume of work I produce for France Télévisions has fallen by a factor of four. Some production companies have gone out of business, and many freelance film and television professionals struggle to work enough days each year to remain eligible for the intermittent employment system.

How are things evolving ?

When platforms dedicated to the performing arts first emerged—such as Arte Concert and Culturebox—broadcasters relied heavily on existing producers, especially festivals, to supply content.

Today, however, the need to offer exclusive programming with a distinctive editorial identity has led broadcasters to develop their own in-house concert series. Instead of simply recording festival performances, they commission productions specifically for the screen and invite artists to perform in those formats themselves.

Some of these series are outstanding, including Concerts Volants, Passengers, Dans le Club, Variations, Bâtiment B, and Les Soirées de Poche. Most recently, I produced the series Miles Davis : 100 Years Ahead of His Time for France.tv.

Alongside these in-house productions, broadcasters also maintain long-standing partnerships with festivals that have become powerful brands in their own right. Hellfest, for example, draws Arte Concert’s largest audience, with around fifty concerts filmed at every edition of the festival. Other major partnerships include the Festival d’Avignon, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Rock en Seine, Jazz à la Villette, Les Francofolies, We Love Green, and Les Vieilles Charrues.

Outside of these two models—in-house concert series and flagship festival partnerships—France Télévisions and Arte also occasionally commission one-off concert films featuring high-profile artists performing at iconic venues, such as Melody Gardot at the Olympia or Aya Nakamura at the Stade de France.

The goal is to create an event—something that stands out and captures attention in an intensely competitive media landscape where audiences have an overwhelming abundance of content to choose from.

During the COVID pandemic, there was a surge in concerts being filmed without live audiences. It also sparked considerable debate within the music industry. Today, that momentum seems to have faded. What lessons did you take away from that period ?

For once, I felt genuinely useful. Concert halls were empty, tours had been canceled, and everyone was confined to their homes. The silence that was suddenly imposed on us was quite shocking.

Working with France Télévisions, we created a small festival to help preserve that connection between artists and audiences. I suggested transforming La Cigale in Paris into a lush, plant-filled space, as though nature had reclaimed the theater. We then organized concerts there with a handful of artists whose tours—like thousands of others—had come to an abrupt halt. One of them was Selah SuE.

We also found ways to keep new projects alive by partnering with festivals to co-produce concerts for audiences watching from home. In fact, we created a wonderful program with the Sons d’Hiver Festival called We Have Something to Tell You !

It’s funny—I often think back to a conversation I had with Lee Konitz while accompanying him on tour in 2010. He had grown a little weary of traveling hundreds of miles every day and performing in a different city every night. He dreamed of staying home and playing remotely instead. He was only half serious, though, because something essential is lost when you’re performing for a camera instead of an audience. What’s missing is the person you’re playing for. Musicians always perform for someone, and it’s far better when that someone has eyes and ears—and can react just a few feet away. I remember a concert without an audience that I co-produced with the Evian Jazz Festival at the beautiful Grange au Lac concert hall. Rhoda Scott was completely thrown off by the absence of an audience. Performing in an empty room left her almost paralyzed. That exchange of energy simply wasn’t there. It was as if the air had been taken away from her. It wasn’t her best performance.

That’s probably the biggest lesson from that period : without an audience, you lose your footing. We were asking musicians to have skills that really belong to actors. Performing for a camera can feel incredibly cold and isolating.

When live concerts finally returned, we captured those long-awaited reunions between artists and audiences in a beautiful film, Jazz Summer Tour, directed by Giuseppe de Vecchi in 2022.

“As for Archieball, Archie Shepp has reached a stage in his life where he’s putting his affairs in order. Right now, we’re looking for a record label to take over the catalog so we can release some previously unheard recordings…”

Although filmmaking is your primary profession, you’ve also been deeply involved in the music world for many years. Together with Archie Shepp and his wife, Monette Berthommier, you co-founded Archieball, an agency specializing in concert production and international touring. Since 2024, following the passing of the deeply committed Frank Cassenti, with whom you co-founded the Jazz à Porquerolles Festival, you have also served as the festival’s volunteer Artistic Director. Could you tell us more about these different roles ? And how do you see the future of the festival, given the uncertain climate surrounding public funding for cultural projects ?

That’s a big question.

As for Archieball, Archie Shepp has reached a stage in his life where he’s putting his affairs in order. Right now, we’re looking for a record label to take over the catalog so we can release some previously unheard recordings and reissue a number of long out-of-print albums from the 1970s. There are some real gems in there. We’re currently in discussions with Impulse !, but we’re keeping our options open.

As for Porquerolles, it’s a long story. This year we’ll be celebrating the festival’s 25th edition, and I don’t think we’ve ever faced so many challenges.

This festival is a utopian project that survives thanks to the enthusiasm and volunteer commitment of about a dozen passionate people. It’s also a wonderfully complicated anomaly. Organizing an event inside a historic monument, in the heart of a national park, on an island, in a village overwhelmed by tourism, means navigating layer upon layer of logistical and administrative constraints.

Defending ambitious, often niche forms of music—at the opposite end of the spectrum from the business models of companies like AEG or Live Nation—is also an economic contradiction. And yet we’re still here, alongside a whole network of small independent festivals and the artists who depend on these spaces to create and perform.

Public funding is shrinking. One local authority cuts its support by 10 percent, another by 20 percent, while others eliminate their funding altogether. At the same time, technical production costs continue to rise. In France, we call this the scissor effect : revenues are falling while expenses are increasing. This year, we’ve reached a breaking point. Even if every concert sells out, even with the extraordinary commitment of our volunteers and the generosity of our sponsors, we’re still heading toward a deficit of roughly €20,000.

Our nonprofit organization presents around forty concerts each year, hosts artists in residence, commissions new work, and plays an active cultural role throughout the Var region year-round. Yet, without sufficient funding, this year’s festival could very well be our last.

What is your personal outlook on the future of French cultural policy as a whole ?

I’m deeply committed to France’s cultural exception policy. I owe my career to it.

Today, I think we’re at a turning point, caught between an old world that hasn’t completely disappeared and a new one that has yet to take shape.

I have nothing against Céline Dion, and I admire her extraordinary ability to bring together people of all generations. But I also need Archie Shepp, Naïssam Jalal, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Géraldine Laurent, and Papanosh. I need free jazz to live.

It’s like the ozone layer : it’s invisible, it’s tiny, but if it disappears, we’re all in trouble. That’s what we have to preserve and defend.

As both an audiovisual entrepreneur and a cultural producer in the music world, how do you reconcile those two roles ? What challenges do you face in balancing them ?

To me, it’s more of an advantage than a challenge. I understand the expectations and constraints of a live music producer, an artist, and an audiovisual producer, and I try to advocate for all three at the same time.

My goal is to be as fair as possible and to balance everyone’s needs and expectations.

How would you describe the evolution of your work as a director of music films over the past ten years ? What do you see as the main positive and negative developments ?

The biggest change is that we produce far fewer films than we used to—but the ones we do make are better.

The downside is that I’m no longer sure I could convince France Télévisions to film the ROVA Saxophone Quartet at Le Vauban in Brest, or to broadcast a live performance from Uzeste.

We are living through a period marked by political tensions and the rise of nationalist, populist, and authoritarian movements. In that context, what role can the worlds of audiovisual media and music play collectively, and how would you like to see them evolve ?

That’s an excellent question.

The role of the media is to give citizens the tools to distinguish truth from falsehood, to push back against fake news and manufactured ignorance, and to help people embrace the complexity of the world. Their responsibility is to cultivate critical thinking and to show that the simplistic narratives promoted by populists are little more than illusions.

The world belongs to those who understand it, and everything today seems designed to confuse us.

Barbara Cassin points out in her excellent book The War of Words that The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading statements made by Donald Trump during his first term in office—roughly twenty every day. And the pace only accelerated during his second term. The amount of energy and resources devoted to manufacturing falsehoods is staggering. We have to push back against it however we can.

Public broadcasters such as Arte and France Télévisions carry out that mission as well as they possibly can, but they too are under threat, like public service media everywhere.

The role of music is different. It is to keep offering beauty and joy because, to me, those are essential forms of nourishment. Without them, life loses its meaning.

That’s our way of resisting : making beauty and joy possible. Creating those moments of grace that quite literally save lives.

I’ll leave you with one thought. Every year, more than 700,000 people around the world die by suicide. That’s more than the combined toll of wars and organized crime. The greatest enemy is often within ourselves. We are, in many ways, our own greatest danger.

Our mission is to give people a reason to live—to offer hope and joy. It may sound a little naïve, but that’s what drives me. And it’s also because I deeply believe that art is humanity’s greatest achievement—its highest calling on this earth.

You seem to have a close relationship with Archie Shepp, whom you’ve known for many years. What has your relationship with him taught you about the spirit of freedom ? And has that lesson influenced the way you approach your work as a filmmaker ?

Archie is pure class. An extraordinary presence dignified and beautiful. He is the history of jazz in a single breath. Radicalism, pride. He is also a fascinating blend of contradictions. Frank Cassenti used to say that the light moves with him. Some people are like that. You can feel their presence even with their backs turned. Deleuze said there are two kinds of people : those who increase our capacity to act and exist, in short, those who lift us up and those who diminish it. Archie Shepp clearly belongs among those who lift up the people whose paths they cross.

One memory stands out, perhaps, when it comes to the spirit of freedom. If you’re reading these lines, if you’re here, it means you love free jazz, you love ‘Blasé’, ‘Attica Blues’, ‘Fire Music’, ‘Mama Too Tight’, all the extraordinary albums from that fiery period. He once told me how hurt he had been to find that his musical explorations no longer allowed him to reach his own family. As though he had gone too far, to a place where he could no longer be heard. He didn’t want to make music that excluded the people he loved. He wanted to restore that connection. In other words, if he sometimes made compromises, it was to keep that connection alive. The limit of our freedom is the person we are addressing. The challenge is to forge a path others can follow so they can join us.

Perhaps there is a parallel with filmmaking. We strive to invent new forms, break free from conventions, and champion a distinctive vision. But we also make films to share them. That is the challenge : to go as far as possible without losing the people we are speaking to.

« Le rôle du monde de l’audiovisuel, c’est de donner aux citoyens les armes pour distinguer le vrai du faux, pour lutter contre les fake news et l’ignorance fabriquée, pour accepter la complexité du monde.  »

Samuel, tu nourris une passion réelle pour la musique… Pourtant ta manière à toi de concrétiser cette passion est de créer une passerelle à travers l’image, dans tes productions en tant que réalisateur de films musicaux. Comment t’es venue l’idée et l’envie de lier l’art de l’image à la musique ?

Il y a plusieurs raisons. La plus évidente, c’est une frustration d’amateur de jazz : Charlie Parker, l’un des plus grands artistes du XXe siècle n’a jamais été filmé en live ! C’est en partie pour compenser cette frustration que j’ai déployé beaucoup d’énergie à filmer les artistes qui me semblent les plus importants de notre époque, afin de faire des capsules temporelles pour les générations futures. Alors que l’immense majorité des caméras sont dirigées vers des sujets anxiogènes et oubliables, je souhaite en diriger quelques-unes vers les artistes qui ont le plus de choses à faire entendre, pour qu’on ne les oublie pas, et pour que nos petits-enfants et arrière-petits-enfants puissent écouter et voir comment on jouait, au début du XXIe siècle. 

L’autre raison, déterminante, c’est la rencontre en 2002 avec Frank Cassenti, qui m’a ouvert les portes de ce monde. À l’époque, je n’avais pas les moyens de me payer des places pour aller dans des clubs ou des festivals, et filmer des concerts m’a permis d’aller directement au cœur de la musique. Filmer un concert impose une écoute active, une tension. La sensation d’être au plus proche de ce geste magique. Le rêve absolu. 

Tu es cofondateur et gérant de la société de production Oléo films. Quel est ton rôle et comment s’y déclinent tes activités ? Et quelle est le rayon d’action de celles-ci dans le territoire national s’agissant de la métropole et des régions françaises ultramarines ?

Mon rôle principal, c’est de défendre la place des musiques que j’aime sur les chaînes de TV. Cela n’est possible que dans l’équilibre précieux, fragile et unique au monde de l’exception culturelle française. Je suis totalement dépendant des chaînes de télévision, et du CNC. C’est important d’en parler, car ce modèle est menacé et j’ai parfois l’impression de vivre dans un monde qui n’existe plus. 

J’ai pu filmer des centaines, voire des milliers de concerts, car je suis arrivé à un moment où le coût de production d’une captation audiovisuelle de qualité avait considérablement baissé, et où les chaînes publiques comme Arte ou France télévisions créaient des plateformes dédiées au spectacle vivant.  Dès 2010, j’ai proposé à Arte une collection de concerts avec l’approche suivante : pour savoir ce qu’est le jazz, il faut aller le capter en live, dans les festivals, qui sont autant de définitions du jazz. On entend à Sons d’hiver des choses qu’on n’entend pas à Jazz à Vienne, on entend à Jazzdor des artistes qu’on n’entend pas au festival Django Reinhardt. Bref, pour savoir ce qu’est le jazz, il faut faire le tour des festivals, et choisir les concerts les plus emblématiques, les créations portées par ces festivals. C’est dans ce cadre qu’on est venu à Sons d’hiver, pour filmer la version opéra de Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, qu’on est allé à Uzeste, au Mans, à Brest etc.

On tourne partout en France, et en Europe (les Polonais adorent le jazz par exemple). Pour les régions ultramarines, on a filmé quelquefois au Martinique Jazz Festival, qui est un véritable point de convergence des extraordinaires musiciens antillais, de la Guadeloupe à Haïti. 

Oléo films est venu à plusieurs reprises capter des concerts du festival Sons d’hiver par le passé, notamment pour France Télévisions. C’est moins (voir plus du tout) le cas désormais. L’on constate d’ailleurs une baisse sensible des captations pour ce qui concerne le jazz aujourd’hui. Comment les choix s’opèrent-ils du côté des diffuseurs ? Quels sont les critères pris en compte ?

La libido des médias audiovisuels pour le jazz est un peu en berne. Il y a plusieurs raisons, liées entre elles. 

1 – le nombre de vues. C’est l’indice numéro 1 pour les diffuseurs. Même s’ils sont des médias de service public, ils sont jugés en fonction de leur audience. Quand un programme ne dépasse pas les 3000 vues, on peut leur reprocher que ces programmes ne répondent à aucune demande, et qu’ils gaspillent de l’argent public. C’est évidemment discutable, car les missions d’un média de service public consistent notamment à valoriser et défendre la diversité, de « rendre accessibles les œuvres capitales de l’humanité, et d’abord de la France, au plus grand nombre possible de Français » comme l’énonçait Malraux dans l’article 1er du Ministère des affaires culturelles. 
Mais la première chose qu’un directeur de programme regarde aujourd’hui, c’est le nombre de followers de l’artiste, le nombre d’auditeurs mensuels sur Spotify. 

2 – L’économie : pour vous faire un ordre d’idée, YouTube rémunère entre 500 et 3000€ le million de vues pour une vidéo longue. Si on s’en tient aux lois de ce marché, aucune de mes productions n’est viable. Le coût d’une captation reste élevé (il faut entre 5 et 15 techniciens très qualifiés pour produire une captation de qualité). Produire la captation audiovisuelle d’un concert est donc a priori déficitaire, à moins de dépasser les 10 ou 15 millions de vues, ce qui n’arrive quasiment jamais pour nos esthétiques. Prolongeant le projet de « rendre accessible les œuvres capitales de l’humanité » au plus grand nombre, des médias publics comme France télévisions ou Arte investissent pour financer ces captations. La difficulté aujourd’hui, c’est que leur budget se réduit (France TV doit par exemple économiser 200 millions d’€ sur 2 ans. Ces économies ont un impact sur tout un écosystème. De mon côté, j’ai divisé par 4 mon volume de production avec France TV. Certains producteurs déposent le bilan, et de nombreux intermittents peinent à boucler leurs heures.)

« Mon rôle principal, c’est de défendre la place des musiques que j’aime sur les chaînes de TV. Cela n’est possible que dans l’équilibre précieux, fragile et unique au monde de l’exception culturelle française.  »

Comment les choses évoluent-elles ? 

Lorsque les plateformes dédiées au spectacle vivant sont apparues (Arte Concert, Culturebox…), les chaînes se sont reposées sur les producteurs existants, notamment les festivals.  Aujourd’hui, par nécessité de produire des contenus inédits, qui portent la marque de la maison, on a vu se créer des collections maisons, ou les chaînes produisent des concerts pour l’image et invitent elles-mêmes les artistes. Il y a des collections formidables, comme les Concerts Volants, ou Passengers, Dans le club, Variations, Bâtiment B, les Soirées de Poche… Ou par exemple la collection « Miles Davis, 100 ans d’avance », que je viens de produire pour france.tv.

A côté de cela, il y a des partenariats historiques entre des chaînes et des festivals considérés comme de véritables marques : le Hellfest, par exemple, qui représente l’audience la plus importante d’Arte Concert (qui y filme une cinquantaine de concerts à chaque édition), Avignon, Aix en Provence, Rock en Seine, Jazz à la Villette, les Francofolies, We Love Green, les Vieilles Charrues… 

En dehors de ces deux pôles (collections maisons ou festivals considérés comme des « marques »), France TV ou Arte s’engagent aussi parfois sur des concerts unitaires avec des artistes très identifiés dans des salles emblématiques (Melody Gardot à l’Olympia, Aya Nakamura au Stade de France…). L’enjeu, c’est de faire évènement, pour exister dans un monde ultraconcurentiel avec une offre abondante…

Il y a eu au moment du Covid une sorte de frénésie de captations de concerts sans public. Cela a d’ailleurs créé le débat, notamment dans le milieu professionnel. Aujourd’hui, le soufflé semble être retombé. Quels enseignements as-tu tiré de cette période ?

Pour une fois, je me suis senti utile. Toutes les salles de concerts étaient vides, les tournées annulées, tout le monde était chez soi. C’était assez brutal, ce silence imposé. On a monté avec France TV un petit festival pour garder ce lien. J’ai proposé de végétaliser la Cigale à Paris, comme si la nature avait repris ses droits, et on a organisé des concerts dans cette belle salle, avec quelques artistes parmi les milliers dont les tournées avaient été brutalement interrompues. Par exemple : Selah Sue.

On a aussi permis à des projets d’exister malgré tout : en s’associant à des festivals pour coproduire des concerts dont le public était chez soi. On a fait un très beau programme avec Sons d’hiver d’ailleurs : We Have Something To Tell You !

C’est drôle, je repense à une conversation avec Lee Konitz, que j’avais accompagné en tournée en 2010. Il était un peu fatigué des journées à parcourir des kilomètres et des kilomètres, à changer de ville tous les soirs. Il rêvait de pouvoir rester chez lui pour jouer à distance. C’était à moitié sincère, car on perd quelque chose d’essentiel à jouer devant une caméra. Manque le destinataire. On joue toujours pour quelqu’un, et c’est mieux s’il a des yeux et des oreilles, et qu’il peut se manifester à quelques mètres. J’ai le souvenir d’un concert sans public que j’avais coproduit avec le festival jazz d’Evian, dans la très belle salle de la grange au lac. Rhoda Scott était paralysée par l’absence de public. Jouer devant une salle vide l’a totalement déstabilisée. Il n’y avait plus cet échange. Comme si elle n’avait plus d’air. Elle n’a pas fait son meilleur concert. 

C’est surtout ça l’enseignement de cette période : sans public, on perd pied. On demande aux artistes des qualités d’acteurs qu’ils n’ont pas forcément (jouer devant une caméra, cela peut être glacial). Quand les concerts ont repris, nous avons filmé ces retrouvailles entre artistes et public, dans un beau film (Jazz Summer Tour, réalisé par Giuseppe de Vecchi en 2022). 

« Concernant Archieball, Archie Shepp étant dans une période où il range ses affaires, nous sommes actuellement en train de chercher un label pour reprendre le catalogue
et sortir quelques enregistrements
inédits… »

Même si la réalisation de films est ton activité principale, tu es aussi depuis plusieurs années très engagé dans la musique. Tu as par exemple fondé avec Archie Shepp et son épouse Monette Berthommier l’agence Archieball qui est spécialisée dans la production de concerts et de tournées internationales. Mais aussi, tu es devenu sous un statut de bénévole le directeur artistique du festival Jazz à Porquerolles depuis 2024, après le décès du très engagé Frank Cassenti avec qui tu as fondé ce festival.  Que peux-tu nous dire là-dessus ? Comment vois-tu l’avenir de ce festival compte tenu des temps incertains que nous vivons s’agissant du financement des projets culturels par les institutions publiques ?

Vaste sujet. Concernant Archieball, Archie Shepp étant dans une période où il range ses affaires, nous sommes actuellement en train de chercher un label pour reprendre le catalogue et sortir quelques enregistrements inédits ou faire de nouvelles éditions d’albums orphelins des années 70 (il y a quelques pépites). Nous discutons actuellement avec Impulse !, mais les portes restent ouvertes. 

Concernant Porquerolles, c’est une longue histoire. On va fêter cette année la 25e édition du festival, et je crois qu’on n’a jamais autant été menacé. 

Ce festival est une utopie qui tient grâce à l’enthousiasme et l’engagement bénévole d’une dizaine de passionnés. Et c’est une anomalie complexe : organiser un événement dans un monument historique, au cœur d’un parc national, sur une île, dans un village hyper touristique, représente un millefeuille de contraintes. Défendre des esthétiques exigeantes et souvent minoritaires, aux antipodes des logiques d’AEG ou de Live Nation, est aussi une aberration économique. Mais nous existons encore, comme tout un réseau de petits festivals indépendants, et comme tout un réseau d’artistes qui ont besoin de ces espaces. 

Les budgets des collectivités baissent, nous avons 10 % de soutien en moins par ici, 20 % en moins là, ou bien la suppression totale d’un soutien, et dans le même temps, les coûts techniques augmentent. C’est ce qu’on appelle l’effet ciseau, qui est arrivé cette année à un point de non-retour : même en remplissant tous les concerts à 100 %, même avec un engagement bénévole, et tous nos mécènes, on se dirige tout droit vers un déficit d’environ 20k€. 

Notre association organise une quarantaine de concerts par an, accueille des artistes en résidence, suscite des créations, joue un rôle d’acteur culturel toute l’année dans le Var, mais cette édition sera peut-être sa dernière, faute de financements suffisants. 

Quel regard personnel portes-tu sur l’avenir de la politique culturelle française en général ?

Je suis très attaché à l’exception culturelle française. Je lui dois tout. Aujourd’hui, nous sommes à un seuil de basculement, dans lequel l’ancien monde n’a pas tout à fait disparu, et le nouveau monde n’est pas formé. Je n’ai rien contre Céline Dion, et j’admire sa capacité à fédérer de nombreuses générations et familles. Mais j’ai besoin d’Archie Shepp, de Naïssam Jalal, de John Zorn, de Marc Ribot, de Géraldine Laurent, de Papanosh, j’ai besoin de free pour vivre. C’est comme la couche d’ozone : c’est invisible, c’est minuscule, mais si ça disparait, on va tous mourir. C’est ça qu’il faut préserver et défendre.

En tant qu’entrepreneur dans l’audiovisuel et acteur culturel dans le champ de la musique, comment concilies-tu les deux ? Quelles sont les contraintes que tu rencontres dans la combinaison de ces deux activités ?

C’est plutôt une chance qu’une contrainte : je connais les attentes et les difficultés d’un producteur de spectacle, d’un artiste, et d’un producteur audiovisuel, et je défends les trois à la fois. J’essaie d’être le plus juste et équitable possible avec les attentes de chacun.

Comment définirais-tu l’évolution de tes activités de réalisateur de films musicaux au cours des dix dernières années ? Quels sont selon toi les points positifs et les points négatifs qui pourraient se dégager de cette analyse ?

Le premier changement, c’est qu’on en fait beaucoup moins, mais qu’on fait mieux. Le point négatif, c’est que je ne suis pas certain de pouvoir convaincre à nouveau France TV de filmer le Rova saxophones 4tet au Vauban à Brest, ou de faire un direct à Uzeste.

Nous traversons actuellement une période marquée par des tensions politiques et une montée de courants nationalistes, populistes et/ou autoritaires. Dans ce contexte, quel rôle les mondes de l’audiovisuel et de la musique peuvent-ils jouer collectivement, et comment souhaiterais-tu les voir évoluer ?

Excellente question. 

Le rôle du monde de l’audiovisuel, c’est de donner aux citoyens les armes pour distinguer le vrai du faux, pour lutter contre les fake news et l’ignorance fabriquée, pour accepter la complexité du monde. Leur rôle, c’est de construire et d’aiguiser l’esprit critique des citoyens, et de montrer que les récits simplificateurs des populistes ne sont que des mirages. Le monde appartient à ceux qui le comprennent, et tout est fait pour nous embrouiller. Par exemple, Barbara Cassin rappelle dans son excellent livre la Guerre des mots, que le Washington Post a recensé 30 573 déclarations fausses ou trompeuses de Donald Trump durant son premier mandat, soit environ 20 par jour. Et qu’il a accéléré le débit pendant son deuxième mandat. L’énergie et les moyens dépensés pour fabriquer du mensonge est totalement colossal. Il faut le contrer comme on peut. Cette mission, ARTE et France TV l’assument aussi bien qu’ils le peuvent, mais ils sont menacés, comme tous les médias de service public. 

Le rôle du monde de la musique, c’est de continuer à offrir de la beauté et de la joie, car c’est, selon moi, la nourriture essentielle sans laquelle notre vie n’a plus de sens. C’est notre manière de lutter : rendre la beauté et la joie possible. Offrir ces moments de grâce qui sauvent la vie. 

Je rappelle juste un truc : chaque année, dans le monde, il y a plus de 700 000 suicides. C’est plus que l’addition des guerres et du crime organisé. L’ennemi, il est en soi. Nous sommes à nous-mêmes notre principal danger. Notre mission, c’est de donner l’envie de vivre. De donner de l’espoir et de la joie. Ça peut paraitre un peu bébête, mais c’est ce qui me motive. Et aussi parce que je crois profondément que l’art est le plus bel accomplissement de l’homme, sa mission ultime sur cette terre. 

Tu sembles être proche d’Archie Shepp que tu connais depuis bien longtemps. Qu’as-tu appris dans ta relation avec lui sur l’esprit de liberté en général et qui t’ait profondément marqué ? Est-ce que cet enseignement t’a apporté quelque chose dans l’exercice de ton métier de réalisateur de films ?

Archie, c’est la classe absolue. Une présence extraordinaire, digne et belle. C’est l’histoire du jazz dans un souffle. La radicalité, la fierté. C’est aussi un savant mélange de contradictions. Frank Cassenti disait que la lumière se déplace avec lui. Il y a des êtres comme ça. On sent leur présence même de dos. Deleuze disait qu’il y a deux types d’êtres : ceux qui augmentent notre puissance d’agir et d’exister, en bref ceux qui nous élèvent, et ceux qui la diminuent. Archie Shepp fait clairement partie des hommes qui élèvent ceux qu’il croise.  

Il y a peut-être un souvenir marquant, concernant l’esprit de liberté. Si vous lisez ces lignes, si vous êtes ici, c’est que vous aimez le free jazz, vous aimez Blasé, Attica Blues, Fire Music, Mama Too Tight, tous les albums extraordinaires de cette période de feu. Il m’a dit un jour qu’il avait été blessé par le fait que ses explorations musicales ne lui permettaient plus de toucher sa propre famille. Comme s’il était allé trop loin, à un endroit où on ne l’entend plus. Il ne voulait pas faire une musique qui exclue ceux qu’il aimait. Il voulait retrouver ce lien. Bref, s’il a fait des compromis parfois, c’est pour toujours garder le lien. La limite de notre liberté, c’est la personne à qui on s’adresse. L’enjeu, c’est de tracer un chemin lisible pour que les autres puissent nous rejoindre. 

Il y a peut-être un parallèle avec le métier de réalisateur. On cherche à inventer des formes, à sortir des conventions, à défendre une vision singulière. Mais on fait aussi des films pour les partager. L’enjeu est là : aller aussi loin que possible, sans perdre ceux à qui l’on s’adresse.

You clearly have a deep passion for music. Yet the way you’ve chosen to express that passion is by building a bridge through film, directing music documentaries and concert films. How did you come to combine the art of filmmaking with music ?

There are several reasons. The most obvious is a frustration I share with many jazz lovers : Charlie Parker, one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, was never properly filmed performing live. Part of what has driven me is the desire to make up for that loss by devoting so much energy to filming the artists I consider the most important of our time, creating time capsules for future generations.

At a time when the vast majority of cameras are pointed at stories that are anxiety-inducing and quickly forgotten, I want to point at least a few of them toward the artists who have the most meaningful things to express—so they won’t be forgotten, and so our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to hear and see how music was played in the early twenty-first century.

The other, decisive reason was meeting Frank Cassenti in 2002. He opened the door to this world for me. At the time, I couldn’t afford tickets to clubs or festivals, and filming concerts gave me direct access to the heart of the music. Filming a concert demands intense, active listening. It creates a sense of focus and anticipation, the feeling of being as close as possible to that magical act of creation. It was the ultimate dream.

You are the co-founder and managing director of the production company Oléo Films. What are the company’s main activities ? What is your role within the company ?

My primary role is to champion the place of the music I love on television. That is only possible because of the unique—and both precious and fragile—balance created by France’s cultural exception policy. I depend entirely on public broadcasters and on the French National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC). It’s important to talk about this because this model is under threat, and I sometimes feel as though I’m living in a world that no longer exists. I’ve been able to film hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of concerts because I came along at a time when the cost of producing high-quality live concert recordings had dropped dramatically, and public broadcasters such as Arte and France Télévisions were launching platforms dedicated to the performing arts. As early as 2010, I proposed a concert series to Arte based on a simple idea : if you want to understand what jazz is, you have to capture it live, at festivals, because each festival offers its own definition of jazz. At Sons d’Hiver, you hear things you won’t hear at Jazz à Vienne. At Jazzdor, you’ll discover artists who aren’t featured at the Django Reinhardt Festival. In other words, if you want to understand jazz, you have to travel from festival to festival, selecting the concerts that best represent each event and the original productions they bring to life. That’s how we ended up at Sons d’Hiver to film the operatic adaptation of ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’, and why we’ve also traveled to Uzeste, Le Mans, Brest, and many other festivals across France.

And what is the scope of its work across mainland France and the French overseas territories ?

We film concerts all across France, as well as throughout Europe. Poland, for example, has an incredible passion for jazz. As for the French overseas territories, we’ve occasionally filmed at the Martinique Jazz Festival, which is a true gathering place for the remarkable musicians of the French Caribbean and the wider Caribbean, from Guadeloupe to Haiti.

Oléo Films has filmed concerts at the Sons d’hiver Festival on several occasions in the past, notably for France Télévisions. That seems to happen much less frequently today—or not at all. More broadly, there appears to be a significant decline in the number of jazz concert recordings being commissioned. How do broadcasters make their programming decisions ? What criteria do they consider ?

The appetite of television broadcasters for jazz has definitely declined. There are several interconnected reasons for this.

First, audience numbers. That’s the number one metric for broadcasters. Even though they are public service media organizations, they are still evaluated largely on the size of their audience. When a program attracts fewer than 3,000 views, it’s easy for critics to argue that there’s no real demand for it and that public money is being wasted.

Of course, that’s open to debate. One of the core missions of public service media is to promote and protect cultural diversity—to « make humanity’s greatest works, and first and foremost those of France, accessible to as many French people as possible, » as André Malraux stated in the founding charter of France’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs.

Today, however, the first thing a programming executive looks at is an artist’s social media following or the number of their monthly listeners on Spotify.

Second, economics. To give you a sense of the numbers, YouTube pays somewhere between €500 and €3,000 for one million views of a long-form video. By those market standards, none of my productions are financially viable.

Producing a high-quality concert film remains expensive. It typically requires a crew of between five and fifteen highly skilled technicians. As a result, filming a concert is almost always a money-losing proposition unless it reaches ten or fifteen million views—which virtually never happens for the kinds of music we work with.

To uphold the mission of making humanity’s great artistic works accessible to the widest possible audience, public broadcasters such as France Télévisions and Arte continue to invest in financing these productions. The challenge today is that their budgets are shrinking. France Télévisions, for example, has been required to cut €200 million over a two-year period. Those budget reductions ripple through the entire ecosystem.

On my end, the volume of work I produce for France Télévisions has fallen by a factor of four. Some production companies have gone out of business, and many freelance film and television professionals struggle to work enough days each year to remain eligible for the intermittent employment system.

How are things evolving ?

When platforms dedicated to the performing arts first emerged—such as Arte Concert and Culturebox—broadcasters relied heavily on existing producers, especially festivals, to supply content.

Today, however, the need to offer exclusive programming with a distinctive editorial identity has led broadcasters to develop their own in-house concert series. Instead of simply recording festival performances, they commission productions specifically for the screen and invite artists to perform in those formats themselves.

Some of these series are outstanding, including Concerts Volants, Passengers, Dans le Club, Variations, Bâtiment B, and Les Soirées de Poche. Most recently, I produced the series Miles Davis : 100 Years Ahead of His Time for France.tv.

Alongside these in-house productions, broadcasters also maintain long-standing partnerships with festivals that have become powerful brands in their own right. Hellfest, for example, draws Arte Concert’s largest audience, with around fifty concerts filmed at every edition of the festival. Other major partnerships include the Festival d’Avignon, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Rock en Seine, Jazz à la Villette, Les Francofolies, We Love Green, and Les Vieilles Charrues.

Outside of these two models—in-house concert series and flagship festival partnerships—France Télévisions and Arte also occasionally commission one-off concert films featuring high-profile artists performing at iconic venues, such as Melody Gardot at the Olympia or Aya Nakamura at the Stade de France.

The goal is to create an event—something that stands out and captures attention in an intensely competitive media landscape where audiences have an overwhelming abundance of content to choose from.

During the COVID pandemic, there was a surge in concerts being filmed without live audiences. It also sparked considerable debate within the music industry. Today, that momentum seems to have faded. What lessons did you take away from that period ?

For once, I felt genuinely useful. Concert halls were empty, tours had been canceled, and everyone was confined to their homes. The silence that was suddenly imposed on us was quite shocking.

Working with France Télévisions, we created a small festival to help preserve that connection between artists and audiences. I suggested transforming La Cigale in Paris into a lush, plant-filled space, as though nature had reclaimed the theater. We then organized concerts there with a handful of artists whose tours—like thousands of others—had come to an abrupt halt. One of them was Selah SuE.

We also found ways to keep new projects alive by partnering with festivals to co-produce concerts for audiences watching from home. In fact, we created a wonderful program with the Sons d’Hiver Festival called We Have Something to Tell You !

It’s funny—I often think back to a conversation I had with Lee Konitz while accompanying him on tour in 2010. He had grown a little weary of traveling hundreds of miles every day and performing in a different city every night. He dreamed of staying home and playing remotely instead. He was only half serious, though, because something essential is lost when you’re performing for a camera instead of an audience. What’s missing is the person you’re playing for. Musicians always perform for someone, and it’s far better when that someone has eyes and ears—and can react just a few feet away. I remember a concert without an audience that I co-produced with the Evian Jazz Festival at the beautiful Grange au Lac concert hall. Rhoda Scott was completely thrown off by the absence of an audience. Performing in an empty room left her almost paralyzed. That exchange of energy simply wasn’t there. It was as if the air had been taken away from her. It wasn’t her best performance.

That’s probably the biggest lesson from that period : without an audience, you lose your footing. We were asking musicians to have skills that really belong to actors. Performing for a camera can feel incredibly cold and isolating.

When live concerts finally returned, we captured those long-awaited reunions between artists and audiences in a beautiful film, Jazz Summer Tour, directed by Giuseppe de Vecchi in 2022.

“As for Archieball, Archie Shepp has reached a stage in his life where he’s putting his affairs in order. Right now, we’re looking for a record label to take over the catalog so we can release some previously unheard recordings…”

Although filmmaking is your primary profession, you’ve also been deeply involved in the music world for many years. Together with Archie Shepp and his wife, Monette Berthommier, you co-founded Archieball, an agency specializing in concert production and international touring. Since 2024, following the passing of the deeply committed Frank Cassenti, with whom you co-founded the Jazz à Porquerolles Festival, you have also served as the festival’s volunteer Artistic Director. Could you tell us more about these different roles ? And how do you see the future of the festival, given the uncertain climate surrounding public funding for cultural projects ?

That’s a big question.

As for Archieball, Archie Shepp has reached a stage in his life where he’s putting his affairs in order. Right now, we’re looking for a record label to take over the catalog so we can release some previously unheard recordings and reissue a number of long out-of-print albums from the 1970s. There are some real gems in there. We’re currently in discussions with Impulse !, but we’re keeping our options open.

As for Porquerolles, it’s a long story. This year we’ll be celebrating the festival’s 25th edition, and I don’t think we’ve ever faced so many challenges.

This festival is a utopian project that survives thanks to the enthusiasm and volunteer commitment of about a dozen passionate people. It’s also a wonderfully complicated anomaly. Organizing an event inside a historic monument, in the heart of a national park, on an island, in a village overwhelmed by tourism, means navigating layer upon layer of logistical and administrative constraints.

Defending ambitious, often niche forms of music—at the opposite end of the spectrum from the business models of companies like AEG or Live Nation—is also an economic contradiction. And yet we’re still here, alongside a whole network of small independent festivals and the artists who depend on these spaces to create and perform.

Public funding is shrinking. One local authority cuts its support by 10 percent, another by 20 percent, while others eliminate their funding altogether. At the same time, technical production costs continue to rise. In France, we call this the scissor effect : revenues are falling while expenses are increasing. This year, we’ve reached a breaking point. Even if every concert sells out, even with the extraordinary commitment of our volunteers and the generosity of our sponsors, we’re still heading toward a deficit of roughly €20,000.

Our nonprofit organization presents around forty concerts each year, hosts artists in residence, commissions new work, and plays an active cultural role throughout the Var region year-round. Yet, without sufficient funding, this year’s festival could very well be our last.

What is your personal outlook on the future of French cultural policy as a whole ?

I’m deeply committed to France’s cultural exception policy. I owe my career to it.

Today, I think we’re at a turning point, caught between an old world that hasn’t completely disappeared and a new one that has yet to take shape.

I have nothing against Céline Dion, and I admire her extraordinary ability to bring together people of all generations. But I also need Archie Shepp, Naïssam Jalal, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Géraldine Laurent, and Papanosh. I need free jazz to live.

It’s like the ozone layer : it’s invisible, it’s tiny, but if it disappears, we’re all in trouble. That’s what we have to preserve and defend.

As both an audiovisual entrepreneur and a cultural producer in the music world, how do you reconcile those two roles ? What challenges do you face in balancing them ?

To me, it’s more of an advantage than a challenge. I understand the expectations and constraints of a live music producer, an artist, and an audiovisual producer, and I try to advocate for all three at the same time.

My goal is to be as fair as possible and to balance everyone’s needs and expectations.

How would you describe the evolution of your work as a director of music films over the past ten years ? What do you see as the main positive and negative developments ?

The biggest change is that we produce far fewer films than we used to—but the ones we do make are better.

The downside is that I’m no longer sure I could convince France Télévisions to film the ROVA Saxophone Quartet at Le Vauban in Brest, or to broadcast a live performance from Uzeste.

We are living through a period marked by political tensions and the rise of nationalist, populist, and authoritarian movements. In that context, what role can the worlds of audiovisual media and music play collectively, and how would you like to see them evolve ?

That’s an excellent question.

The role of the media is to give citizens the tools to distinguish truth from falsehood, to push back against fake news and manufactured ignorance, and to help people embrace the complexity of the world. Their responsibility is to cultivate critical thinking and to show that the simplistic narratives promoted by populists are little more than illusions.

The world belongs to those who understand it, and everything today seems designed to confuse us.

Barbara Cassin points out in her excellent book The War of Words that The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading statements made by Donald Trump during his first term in office—roughly twenty every day. And the pace only accelerated during his second term. The amount of energy and resources devoted to manufacturing falsehoods is staggering. We have to push back against it however we can.

Public broadcasters such as Arte and France Télévisions carry out that mission as well as they possibly can, but they too are under threat, like public service media everywhere.

The role of music is different. It is to keep offering beauty and joy because, to me, those are essential forms of nourishment. Without them, life loses its meaning.

That’s our way of resisting : making beauty and joy possible. Creating those moments of grace that quite literally save lives.

I’ll leave you with one thought. Every year, more than 700,000 people around the world die by suicide. That’s more than the combined toll of wars and organized crime. The greatest enemy is often within ourselves. We are, in many ways, our own greatest danger.

Our mission is to give people a reason to live—to offer hope and joy. It may sound a little naïve, but that’s what drives me. And it’s also because I deeply believe that art is humanity’s greatest achievement—its highest calling on this earth.

You seem to have a close relationship with Archie Shepp, whom you’ve known for many years. What has your relationship with him taught you about the spirit of freedom ? And has that lesson influenced the way you approach your work as a filmmaker ?

Archie is pure class. An extraordinary presence dignified and beautiful. He is the history of jazz in a single breath. Radicalism, pride. He is also a fascinating blend of contradictions. Frank Cassenti used to say that the light moves with him. Some people are like that. You can feel their presence even with their backs turned. Deleuze said there are two kinds of people : those who increase our capacity to act and exist, in short, those who lift us up and those who diminish it. Archie Shepp clearly belongs among those who lift up the people whose paths they cross.

One memory stands out, perhaps, when it comes to the spirit of freedom. If you’re reading these lines, if you’re here, it means you love free jazz, you love ‘Blasé’, ‘Attica Blues’, ‘Fire Music’, ‘Mama Too Tight’, all the extraordinary albums from that fiery period. He once told me how hurt he had been to find that his musical explorations no longer allowed him to reach his own family. As though he had gone too far, to a place where he could no longer be heard. He didn’t want to make music that excluded the people he loved. He wanted to restore that connection. In other words, if he sometimes made compromises, it was to keep that connection alive. The limit of our freedom is the person we are addressing. The challenge is to forge a path others can follow so they can join us.

Perhaps there is a parallel with filmmaking. We strive to invent new forms, break free from conventions, and champion a distinctive vision. But we also make films to share them. That is the challenge : to go as far as possible without losing the people we are speaking to.