The film director Roman Polanski will attend a retrospective of his life’s work in Paris on Monday in spite of planned protests and new rape allegations against him.
A leading French feminist organisation has called for a demonstration outside the Cinémathèque Française when the event opens after a petition to cancel it failed.
The tribute was described in the petition as “indecent” and an insult to victims of assault mobilised by the #MeToo campaign.
“It’s an affront to all rape victims, and particularly Polanski’s victims,” it reads. “Polanski deserves dishonour, not honours.”
The petition questions the Cinémathèque’s timing in honouring Polanski, whose films include Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist and The Ghost Writer, at the height of the scandal surrounding the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
Polanski, who is French-Polish, is still wanted in the US on charges of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Polanski admitted having sex with his underage victim but fled to Paris before sentencing; repeated attempts to extradite him to the US have failed. Another woman came forward this month to claim the director raped her in 1972 when she was underage, in the Swiss town of Gstaad. Three other women claim the director assaulted them when they were minors.
The retrospective has sparked outrage among women’s rights campaigners including the Osez le Féminisme group, particularly as it follows the Weinstein scandal and the subsequent #MeToo campaign, which has highlighted the extent of sexual abuse.
In January, Polanski, 84, was forced to step down as host of the César awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars, after 61,000 people signed a petition opposing him being given the prestigious job.
Costa-Gavras, the Greek-French director who is head of the Cinémathèque Française, insisted it was not the institution’s role to be judge or jury or to moralise, and accused critics of “out-and-out censorship”.
“True to its values and independent tradition, the Cinémathèque does not see itself as a substitute for the law,” Costa-Gavras said in a statement.
“We don’t give out prizes or certificates for good behaviour. Our ambition is different: to show the complete work of film-makers and to place them in the permanent history of the Cinémathèque.”
The Weinstein scandal has sparked claims from French women that they were preyed on by influential and well-known figures in the film industry.
The actor Isabelle Adjani claimed French culture turned a blind eye to sexual violence and harassment and that “predators and harassers use the seduction game as one of the weapons in their defence arsenal”.
“There are those who claim that these women are not so innocent, because they lend themselves to this game that is part of our culture. In production houses or among decision-makers, I have often heard: ‘All sluts, all whores, anyway, these actresses!’,” Adjani wrote in the Journal du Dimanche.
Laure Salmona, a feminist campaigner and researcher into sexual violence, who launched the petition against the retrospective, said it was time to end the tolerance for “a rape culture that gives rise to a language that seeks to minimise, excuse and perpetuate sexual violence”.
“We also need to end the impunity of famous men who rape, assault and kill women and their children without hindering their careers,” she added.
Salmona said of Polanski: “A great film-maker perhaps, but also a big criminal … what message is the French Cinémathèque sending by announcing this retrospective? That crimes are, when all is said and done, diluted by fame and that rape is of little importance if committed by a talented man? How many more victims do there have to be for the film industry to realise that it cannot continue praising a paedophile to the skies?”
