French film guilds representing authors, directors and producers have released a joint letter pledging their “full solidarity” with the SAG-AFTRA and WGA double strike.
“This battle that’s shaping tomorrow’s industry crosses borders. It’s also ours,” reads the letter, which was signed by the ARP (authors, directors, producers) and SRF (society of French directors), the governing body of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.
The letter says the double strike “signals a turning point where the questions of sharing of wealth and integration of new models and AI are central.”
The French orgs said they share the same demands to “adapt the model of value-sharing to the new services to make sure that the transition from linear doesn’t lead to a weakening of creators.” They also touched on AI, saying that it must be regulated. “It can bring opportunities for our sector at the condition that we preserve the central place of authors and artists,” the letter reads.
While French unions for writers and actors have not joined the strike, they share the same negotiating points on royalties from streamers and AI. Jimmy Shuman, an American expat who has been living in France since 1969 and represents the French guild for actors and performers (SFA), said actors in France working with streamers aren’t receiving royalties like local screenwriters and composers, who are covered by an agreement signed with the country’s collective management society for authors and composers (SACD).
Shuman said the guild has been trying to negotiating with French producers for the last decade, in vain, to have them pay actors proportionally to the number of uses and territories on streaming services. “We’ve been negotiating with producers because we sign the contracts with them, but we hope to negotiate directly with streamers in the coming months,” Shuman explained.
“When a French actor works for a linear TV channel, he/she gets paid for the first broadcast, and then for reruns either directly from the channel or through a percentage of the producers’ net,” said Shuman. “But when an actor works for a streaming service, whether it’s Slash (France Televisions’ platform) or Netflix, the actor gets a fee from the producer at the start and that’s basically it.”
He said AI is also viewed as a threat for French actors due to the increased use of this technology for dubbing and commercials.
In fact, the SFA has joined the United Voice Artists, which gathers voice acting guilds, in their push to have EU politicians address the risks of AI-generated content and the need to protect artists’ rights.
“The act of creating is part of human nature and involves using one’s imagination and vision for the future and, inparticular, through the human voice,” said the United Voice Artists in a letter on behalf of members of leading EU guilds, associations and unions in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Poland and The Netherlands as well as Switzerland, the U.S., Turkey and Latin America. “The undiscriminating and unregulated use of Artificial Intelligence is a risk that could lead to the extinction of an artistic heritage of creativity and wonder, an asset that machines cannot generate.”
Shuman said SAG has asked the French guild to organize a solidarity event like their British counterparts but it hasn’t been possible because “so many of our members are attending the Avignon Festival [for theater].” He said he hopes to organize an event by the end of the summer when the French film and TV community will be back in town.
