Gérard Lebovici
Encyclopedia
Gerard Lebovici was a French film producer, editor and impresario.
His mother was executed in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. While on the verge of embarking on a promising stage career at twenty years of age, Lebovici's father died, leaving him orphaned.
Out of the necessity to ensure a source of income for himself more secure than acting, he followed his father into a menial occupation. But passion for show-business caught up with him and in 1960, he founded a management agency with Michele Meritz through which he represented the interests of Jean-Pierre Cassel
. Subsequently during the Sixties, he rapidly rose to prominence in show business by dint of his distinguished business acumen and an intuitive understanding of the film industry.
In 1965, he bought a management agency from Andre Bernheim which included among its clients the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
. He gradually created an empire in the cinema industry which lasted until 1972, with his creation of Artmédia
, the first pan-European agency managing a combination of writers, directors and actors. Clients included Bertrand de Labbey, Jean-Louis Livi and Serge Rousseau
(who was to discover a new generation of French stars at the beginning of the Seventies, such as Patrick Dewaere
, Coluche
, Miou-Miou
and Jacques Villeret
).
Parallel to his activities in business, Gerard Lebovici acquired a sulfurous reputation through his political associations. Scarcely politicized in his youth, although of mildly Left-wing sympathies, his future wife Floriana Chiampo, as well as the events of May 1968, radicalised him. Lebovici was fascinated by the Paris uprisings and seems to have foreseen them as the birth of a true revolution. He is said to have confided to his friend Gérard Guégan the idea of founding a radical publishing house which he intended to be the “Gallimard of the revolution”. This idea materialised in 1969 under the name of Editions Champ Libre.
Champ Libre published a broad range of texts which reflected the ideological confusion of the time, as well as the growing influence of the American counter-culture. The defining moment of Champ Libre's development came in 1971 when Guy Debord
submitted "The Society of the Spectacle
" for publication.
In 1974, Lebovici decided to move Editions Champ Libre even more towards the fringes of the publishing industry. Debord acquired a growing influence over the choice of publication of certain titles (Clausewitz, Baltasar Gracian
, Jorge Manrique
, poets of the T'ang Dynasty, Omar Kayyam, but also Jaime Semprun, Jean-Louis Moinet and others) while the marketing policy of the house broke with normal standards: there were no paperback editions of bestsellers, and no contact with the press.
Champ Libre also republished some classic revolutionary tracts as well as writers dissenting from Stalinism
(Marx, Bakunin, Landauer
, Korsch
, Ciliga
, Souvarine
, George Orwell
). Lebovici also continued his work in film, financing three films by Debord of which “Society of the Spectacle” was the first, in 1973.
Ten years later, Lebovici bought the Studio Cujas cinema in central Paris and devoted it exclusively to showing Debord's films. The unlimited friendship between the two men, apparently belied by all lack of similarity besides their respective age, provoked jealousy even among the close associates of Lebovici. In addition to his taste for political circles of the far left, Lebovici had an extreme fascination for the culture of the criminal classes. He adopted the daughter, Sabrina, of France's "public enemy n° 1" at the time, the bank robber Jacques Mesrine
, who was killed in 1979 by the French police.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Lebovici envisaged withdrawing from the world of cinema, which he considered himself to have already revolutionised, and devote himself entirely to publishing. However, circumstances were to be unforthcoming: A few days before his death, he dined with his friend Jean-Paul Belmondo
to tell him about the re-publication by Champ Libre of Jacques Mesrine's autobiography L'Instinct de Mort ('The Death Instinct'), since republished (December 2006) by éditions Le Chien Rouge, Marseille.
On March 7, 1984 Gérard Lebovici was found shot dead in the front seat of his car in the basement of the Avenue Foch
carpark in Paris. There was swift confirmation that he had died on 5 March from four bullets fired from behind into the back of the neck. The assassins have never been caught. His wife Floriana took control of Editions Champ Libre, renaming it Editions Gerard Lebovici and opening a bookshop of the same name in the rue Saint Sulpice, Paris. She died of cancer in February 1990 and the bookshop closed shortly after with the stock transferring to Éditions Ivrea, rue du Sommerard
.
His mother was executed in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. While on the verge of embarking on a promising stage career at twenty years of age, Lebovici's father died, leaving him orphaned.
Out of the necessity to ensure a source of income for himself more secure than acting, he followed his father into a menial occupation. But passion for show-business caught up with him and in 1960, he founded a management agency with Michele Meritz through which he represented the interests of Jean-Pierre Cassel
Jean-Pierre Cassel
Jean-Pierre Cassel was a French actor.-Life and career:Cassel was born Jean-Pierre Crochon in Paris, the son of Louise-Marguerite , an opera singer, and Georges Crochon, a doctor. Cassel was discovered by Gene Kelly as he tap danced on stage, and later cast in the 1957 film The Happy Road...
. Subsequently during the Sixties, he rapidly rose to prominence in show business by dint of his distinguished business acumen and an intuitive understanding of the film industry.
In 1965, he bought a management agency from Andre Bernheim which included among its clients the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Belmondo is a French actor initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s.-Career:Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, west of Paris, Belmondo did not perform well in school, but developed a passion for boxing and football."Did you box professionally very long?" "Not very long...
. He gradually created an empire in the cinema industry which lasted until 1972, with his creation of Artmédia
Artmedia
Artmedia, Seminar and Laboratory of the Aesthetics of Media and Communication, was one of the first scientific projects concerning the relationship between art, technology, philosophy and aesthetics. It was founded in 1985 at the University of Salerno...
, the first pan-European agency managing a combination of writers, directors and actors. Clients included Bertrand de Labbey, Jean-Louis Livi and Serge Rousseau
Serge Rousseau
Serge Rousseau was a French film and television actor and agent. He was a close friend of François Truffaut. He played the husband of murdered Jeanne Moreau in The Bride Wore Black and the unknown man who declares his love for Claude Jade at the end of Stolen Kisses...
(who was to discover a new generation of French stars at the beginning of the Seventies, such as Patrick Dewaere
Patrick Dewaere
Patrick Dewaere was a French film actor. He was born in Saint-Brieuc, Côtes-d'Armor, son of French actress Mado Maurin. His five siblings, Jean-Pierre Maurin , Yves-Marie Maurin , Dominique Maurin , Jean-Francois Maurin and Marie-Veronique Maurin Patrick Dewaere (26 January 1947 – 16 July 1982)...
, Coluche
Coluche
Michel Colucci , better known as Coluche, was a French comedian and actor, famous for his irreverent sense of humour....
, Miou-Miou
Miou-Miou
Miou-Miou is a French actress. In her career she has worked with a number of international directors, including Michel Gondry, Bertrand Blier, Yves Boisset, Claude Berri, Jacques Deray, Michel Deville, Diane Kurys, Radu Mihăileanu, Patrice Leconte, Joseph Losey and Louis Malle.-Career:She was born...
and Jacques Villeret
Jacques Villeret
Jacques Villeret was a French actor.-Early life and Family:Born Jacky Boufroura in Loches, Indre-et-Loire, France, to an Algerian father and a French mother, he is most famous internationally for his role as François Pignon in Le Dîner de Cons, both on the stage and in the later film...
).
Parallel to his activities in business, Gerard Lebovici acquired a sulfurous reputation through his political associations. Scarcely politicized in his youth, although of mildly Left-wing sympathies, his future wife Floriana Chiampo, as well as the events of May 1968, radicalised him. Lebovici was fascinated by the Paris uprisings and seems to have foreseen them as the birth of a true revolution. He is said to have confided to his friend Gérard Guégan the idea of founding a radical publishing house which he intended to be the “Gallimard of the revolution”. This idea materialised in 1969 under the name of Editions Champ Libre.
Champ Libre published a broad range of texts which reflected the ideological confusion of the time, as well as the growing influence of the American counter-culture. The defining moment of Champ Libre's development came in 1971 when Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...
submitted "The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle is a work of philosophy and critical theory by Guy Debord. It was first published in 1967 in France.-Book structure:...
" for publication.
In 1974, Lebovici decided to move Editions Champ Libre even more towards the fringes of the publishing industry. Debord acquired a growing influence over the choice of publication of certain titles (Clausewitz, Baltasar Gracian
Baltasar Gracián
Baltasar Gracián y Morales, SJ was a Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud .-Biography:...
, Jorge Manrique
Jorge Manrique
Jorge Manrique was a major Spanish poet, whose main work, the Coplas a la muerte de su padre , is still read today...
, poets of the T'ang Dynasty, Omar Kayyam, but also Jaime Semprun, Jean-Louis Moinet and others) while the marketing policy of the house broke with normal standards: there were no paperback editions of bestsellers, and no contact with the press.
Champ Libre also republished some classic revolutionary tracts as well as writers dissenting from Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
(Marx, Bakunin, Landauer
Gustav Landauer
Gustav Landauer was one of the leading theorists on anarchism in Germany in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. He was an advocate of communist anarchism and an avowed pacifist. Landauer is also known for his study and translations of William Shakespeare's works into German...
, Korsch
Karl Korsch
-Biography:Korsch was born in Tostedt, near Hamburg, to Carl August Korsch, a secretary at the cantonal court and his wife Therese. In 1898 the family moved to Meiningen, Thuringia and Korsch senior attained the position of a managing clerk in a bank...
, Ciliga
Ante Ciliga
Ante Ciliga was Croatian politician, writer and publisher. Ciliga was one of the founders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia ....
, Souvarine
Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.-Early years:...
, George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
). Lebovici also continued his work in film, financing three films by Debord of which “Society of the Spectacle” was the first, in 1973.
Ten years later, Lebovici bought the Studio Cujas cinema in central Paris and devoted it exclusively to showing Debord's films. The unlimited friendship between the two men, apparently belied by all lack of similarity besides their respective age, provoked jealousy even among the close associates of Lebovici. In addition to his taste for political circles of the far left, Lebovici had an extreme fascination for the culture of the criminal classes. He adopted the daughter, Sabrina, of France's "public enemy n° 1" at the time, the bank robber Jacques Mesrine
Jacques Mesrine
Jacques Mesrine was the most famous criminal in modern French history. He was responsible for numerous bank robberies, burglaries, and kidnappings in France and Canada. Mesrine repeatedly escaped from prison and made international headlines during a final period as a fugitive when his exploits...
, who was killed in 1979 by the French police.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Lebovici envisaged withdrawing from the world of cinema, which he considered himself to have already revolutionised, and devote himself entirely to publishing. However, circumstances were to be unforthcoming: A few days before his death, he dined with his friend Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Belmondo is a French actor initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s.-Career:Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, west of Paris, Belmondo did not perform well in school, but developed a passion for boxing and football."Did you box professionally very long?" "Not very long...
to tell him about the re-publication by Champ Libre of Jacques Mesrine's autobiography L'Instinct de Mort ('The Death Instinct'), since republished (December 2006) by éditions Le Chien Rouge, Marseille.
On March 7, 1984 Gérard Lebovici was found shot dead in the front seat of his car in the basement of the Avenue Foch
Avenue Foch
Avenue Foch is a street in Paris, France, named after Ferdinand Foch in 1929. It was previously named Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. It is one of the most prestigious streets in Paris, and one of the most expensive addresses in the world, home to many grand palaces, including ones belonging to the...
carpark in Paris. There was swift confirmation that he had died on 5 March from four bullets fired from behind into the back of the neck. The assassins have never been caught. His wife Floriana took control of Editions Champ Libre, renaming it Editions Gerard Lebovici and opening a bookshop of the same name in the rue Saint Sulpice, Paris. She died of cancer in February 1990 and the bookshop closed shortly after with the stock transferring to Éditions Ivrea, rue du Sommerard
Rue du Sommerard
The rue des Mathurins, now known as the rue du Sommerard after Alexandre Du Sommerard, is a street in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, in the Sorbonne quarter....
.
External links
- Complete list of books published by Champ Libre on French wikipedia
- An anonymously authored pamphlet exploring the circumstances surrounding Lebovici's death