The former member of the Socialist Party Aurélie Filippetti is following in the footsteps of the Chiraquian Jean-Jacques Aillagon, but in the opposite direction: she will soon abandon her business card as a former Minister of Culture to occupy the direction of cultural affairs for the City of Paris. In this eminent post, which she succeeds Irène Basilis, the novelist will be responsible for some 2,800 municipal agents, partly exhausted by the Covid-19. In February, the staff of the Cent Quatre went on strike to protest against low wages and over-regime. Its management oversees all the music conservatories, which are bursting with demand, Paris Musées, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Gaité Lyrique and oversees the dynamism of the countless cultural associations still subsidized by the City.
The choice of Aurélie Filippetti is obviously political, at a time when Anne Hidalgo is working to regain her authority within the municipal majority before the vote on the future budget, in December. But not in the political sense, assures the entourage of the mayor. “The real challenge for these cultural establishments is to reinvent themselves, to return to the heart of people’s liveswe say to the cabinet of Anne Hidalgo. This requires inventive personalities capable of giving impetus. »
Five other candidates
Leaving rue de Valois in 2014, Aurélie Filippetti had not yet been credited with a flattering record. While his appointment, at the very beginning of François Hollande’s mandate, had been welcomed by cultural circles, tired of Nicolas Sarkozy, the climate quickly deteriorated. This daughter of a Lorraine miner, a convinced feminist who had taught literature before starting a political career, had to justify an unprecedented blow to culture: – 4% in 2013, – 2% in 2014. The betrayal of the promise of sanctuarization of the budget, among other snakes, breaks the idyll between the circles of the culture, forever nostalgic of Jack Lang, and the left of government. Aurélie Filippetti will however succeed in saving the support fund for French cinema and in reducing the rate of VAT on books to 5%, while defending the cultural exception in Brussels.
With her comeback in Paris, obtained against five other candidates, she finds the opportunity to rebound. After her defeat in 2017 in the legislative elections in Moselle, she was expelled from the PS for having supported a dissident list in the senatorial elections, then said goodbye to active politics. Since then, she has chained the costumes: polemicist in the show “On refait le monde” on RTL, teacher at the IEP in Paris where she still gives courses in cultural policy, political humanities and literature. Since 2020, she directed Villa Finaly, in Florence, managed by the Chancellery of Universities.
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