“I wanted to associate a big name with Fémina. And my wish was granted”

Jean-Pierre Gil has reshuffled the cards on the Bordeaux cultural chessboard by renting the Fémina theater to “a craftsman of the spectacle” (comedian and producer Jérémy Ferrari). And he claims it. “I have always been quite free. And that’s what I like in others. The meeting with Jérémy Ferrari happened in a very natural way: he produced shows at the Trianon theater, then came to perform at the Fémina. I really got to know him in December 2023 and I understood that he was the person who would suit me. Jérémy Ferrari is a passionate person, a man of sharing and a very wise entrepreneur. »

The icing on the cake is that the comedian offers to do work to restore the shine to Fémina, which he particularly likes. Work on the room is planned in several stages (over three summers), and will start next summer with the boxes and the room. Purists can rest assured, everything will be redone identically.

Stables, theater, cinema: the multiple lives of Fémina

Everything predestined Jean-Pierre Gil to the theater. Le Fémina was run by his grandfather, Yvon Rigal. “It was he who trained me and through whom I contracted the virus of cinema and entertainment. »

Yvon Rigal entered film exhibition at the age of 18: he was the assistant to Ulysse Sédard, owner of Fémina and Tivoli, rue Nicolas-Beaujon. The latter, an umbrella manufacturer and director of the Arcachon Casino, bought the stables on Rue de Grassi in 1919 to compete with the venue on the Right Bank, the Alcazar. The 1^is April 1921, Victor Bonneterre and Ulysse Sédard opened Fémina at the cinema. When his son Robert Sédard died in a plane accident in 1947, Yvon Rigal took over the reins of both institutions. Then, he bought the Trianon hall from Kléber Harpain in 1955 and later became the owner of the Molière. In 1957, he founded the company Cinéma Guyenne Gascogne, which is still active today and is chaired today by Jean-Pierre Gil.

The shock of cinema

In 1960, Jean-Pierre Gil was 4 years old when, at the end of the cinemascope projection of “Capitan”, he rushed behind the screen, and surprise! Jean Marais is there, in the flesh. But alone. The child is taken aback: “I thought all the actors had played on stage. That’s when I understood what cinema was. »

Schooled in Pessac then Talence, little Jean-Pierre is stuffed during all his school holidays in the paws of his grandfather. “I tried every position in the room. I started as a technician, then a projectionist, then reception, control, rental, ticket sales, etc. I was around 22 when I officially started working at Fémina. At 25, I became director of the company. »

In the mid-1960s, the neighborhoods and barriers of Bordeaux lost the last remaining screens. Comes the advent of multiplexes, and Jean-Pierre Gil, ruling out splitting up his theater, refuses to build a complex of 12 rooms there. He returns to the theater. In 1977, with the help of Jacques Chaban-Delmas, then mayor of Bordeaux, who granted him an extension behind the stage, he created a real performance hall. “We had operettas produced by the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. The city took care of the programming and I took care of the organization. »Operettas are losing their audience. Jean-Pierre Gil then turned to the private sector through the company Alhambra Productions and Euterpe Promotion.

Fifteen years later, the S-Pass company (currently in place) takes over via Fimalac, a company which operates in five sectors of activity including entertainment. And will return in July to the fold of a showman.

Board lover

The Trianon was also part of the resistance: in 1981, Jean-Pierre Gil showed the theater to Alain Marty, then in charge of cinema-recreations at Fémina. The Jean-Vigo arthouse cinema was born: “He stayed there for 25 years. » Then the Utopia was erected, and in 2009, Jean-Pierre Gil once again intended the Trianon for the theater, with Frédéric Bouchet, director of Les Salinières. Today, Xavier Viton directs it.

Jean-Pierre Gil, a stage lover, did not stop there: in 1989, he recovered the walls of the Molière theater which belonged to Félix de Rochebrune, a figure of Girondin theater: “I then made traditional cinema at the Molière, and to tell you the truth, a little bit of erotic cinema: it’s thanks to the buttocks that I saved the boards,” he laughs. In 1994, the Regional Council installed its live performance agency, Oara, at the Molière theater, with Serge Trouillet as director. Joël Brouch will follow at the head of the agency, still in office. Oara moves to Méca, and Jean Pierre Gil chooses Xavier Viton to manage Molière.

“I have always met the right people at the right time,” summarizes Jean-Pierre Gil. And in Bordeaux, small independent structures will be able to coexist with large groups.

A showdown?

Xavier Viton, tenant of the Trianon and the Molière, underlines Jean-Pierre Gil’s interest in artists: “you should know that a large group wanted to buy the Trianon and offered him a mountain of euros. Jean-Pierre Gil resists the sirens of money. And allows us to have a theater, in a difficult period. » Member of La Scène independente, a national union of entertainment entrepreneurs, Xavier Viton fears the advent and development of groups in their sector. The union opened up about it on Tuesday, January 14 to the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, during the plenary meeting of the National Council of Performing Professions (CNPS). “In response to our statement, Rachida Dati, the Minister of Culture, declared that she agreed ”on everything or almost everything” with the words of our president. »