Emmanuel Macron Calls for Global Initiatives to Protect Film and Warns About Dangers of Social Media as Lumiere Summit Opens — SkimNews
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- Emmanuel Macron opened the daylong Lumiere Summit at the Fondation Maeght art museum in Saint Paul de Vence, calling for a global coalition of nations to protect cinema's future.
- Macron warned that social media's endless scroll is designed to provoke instant reactions, arguing 'we've never watched more images. But we're running the risk of not seeing anything' and noting 'our attention is an economic resource.'
- South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is co-chairing the summit with Macron and echoed his calls to shore up independent cinema as 'a robust springboard for the access of local content to global streaming platforms.'
- France and Korea unveiled a trade agreement at the summit committing more than $1 billion to bolster production and animation capabilities between the two countries.
- Macron framed the initiatives as nothing less than preservation of culture and heritage, declaring 'our identities are stories' and stressing the urgency of coordinated international action.
Why it matters: The Lumiere Summit pairs Macron's cultural rhetoric about cinema's survival against algorithmic content with concrete deal-making — most notably a France-Korea partnership worth over $1 billion in production and animation investment — signaling that 'protecting film' now means both regulating attention economies and funding pipeline capacity.
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