Paris. The redistribution of roles is a classic in culture. This is how the director of cabinet of Rachida Dati, Gaëtan Bruel, was appointed to the presidency of the National Center for Cinema and the Animated Image (CNC) and that he should very quickly be replaced by the current advisor Culture in Matignon, Magali Valente. Both had time to prepare. Gaëtan Bruel had been in the starting blocks since the legal troubles of Dominique Boutonnat, who chaired the prestigious operator in cinema since 2019 and had to resign following his conviction by the criminal court. The new president has always burned the steps. His initial training does not have the Cursus Honorum High civil servants of the State (he barely finished his years at Normal Sup), he left at 23 in the United States where he set foot in the cultural services of the French Embassy. He returned there seven years later by the Grande Porte, as a cultural advisor after having successively advised Jean-Yves Le Drian, then Minister of Defense, administered the Pantheon and then advised the Drian again. Gifted for communication, he “invents” the “Villa Albertine”, a program of residences of French-speaking artists and thinkers in the United States, and returns to France to advise Gabriel Attal this time, then ephemeral Minister of National Education. He had joined the rue de Valois in January 2024.
His probable replacement in Dati’s office, Magali Valente, made the reverse movement. For two years she was director of cinema at the CNC after being an administrator at the National Assembly then Tax Advisor of Bruno Le Maire. She then advised Élisabeth Borne in Matignon, then Rima Abdul Malak at culture before a return to Matignon to Michel Barnier.
Rue de Valois, she will meet a new figure: Fleur d’Harcourt, which, after an experience in the edition, notably at Flammarion and in otherwise, joined the cabinet as a book, reading, French language advisor and Languages de France. The portfolio had been without a holder for several months. The book shares with cinema the particularity of being administered by operators under the supervision of the ministry, but who have their own recipes, which gives them autonomy. The CNC is fed, among other things, by the famous entrance ticket tax while the National Book Center is funded by a fee on the turnover of publishers.
The National Center for Music (CNM, created in 2019) also benefits from affected taxes – on variety shows and musical streaming -, but its budget is supplemented by a grant from the Ministry of Culture. He has just acquired a new president in the person of Jean-Baptiste Gourdin, who followed all the work that led to the creation of the CNM when he worked at the Directorate General of the Media and Cultural Industries. Enarque and master advisor to the Court of Auditors, he replaces another enarch and magistrate at the Council of State, Jean-Philippe Thiellay.
