‘Poor Things’ Actor Suzy Bemba Says Intimacy Coordinators Provide ‘Greater Freedom’ on Set as 50/50 Launches Industry Workshops in France
Alongside the ongoing push for greater, industry-wide parity, French activist and feminist organization Collective 50/50 will next tackle workplace harassment with a new plan to bolster and expand existing workplace safety workshops, while promoting the widespread use of intimacy coordinators.
Launched in partnership with France’s National Film Board (CNC) and the professional training organization Afdas, the new initiative will expand the reach of existing programs, which mostly targeted producers. Under the newly announced plan, full casts and crews will receive in-person harassment prevention workshop ahead of production and have access to an ongoing, remote module throughout the shoot. The workshops would be required for all productions receiving CNC support.
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The plan was announced at a 50/50 conference in Paris, which brought together activists, festival heads, producers, Netflix executives, social workers, political attachés and actresses like Suzy Bemba (“Poor Things”) and Ariane Labed (“The Lobster,” “L’Opera”), among others.
The Monday conference also arrived just days after Gerard Depardieu faced a new set of sexual misconduct charges, and in the near immediate aftermath of actress Judith Godrèche’s bombshell revelations that she had been groomed by much older director while only 14 years old.
The news cast a pall over the Monday event, while no doubt informing the panelists’ urge to make the use of on-set intimacy coordinators a standard industry procedure.
“Far too many actors and actresses are in physical and psychological danger,” said panelist Ariane Labed, who co-founded the professional support group The Actors Association (ADA) to combat this very issue. “[Widespread intimacy coordinators] could prevent a lot of trauma, and a lot of people dropping out of the profession because we’re treated like meat.”
She continued, “We must not forget the responsibility of producers, who are employers and, as such, have legal obligations imposed by the Labor Code. Employers must put in place tools to limit the risks associated with situations encountered in the workplace. And scenes of intimacy are where such risks can be found.”
Labed co-founded ADA with “Poor Things” star Suzy Bemba, who herself reflected on the benefits of intimacy coordinators from a creative perspective.
“[Working with an intimacy coordinator] gives me much greater freedom, because I don’t feel reduced by my own fears or by the fear of touching my co-performer in an undesired place,” Bemba explained.
“The result is a clear consensus for everyone, and a framework that allows us to free ourselves from fears and potentially go much further. We can have that greater freedom, and can shake off those stereotypes of three caresses and an orgasm that we see in so many productions,” she continued. “I’m simply not in this business to produce the same images all the time, and even less to perpetuate stereotypes that are clearly harmful to all our lives.”
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