JOËL CHAPRON

Born in 1960, Joël Chapron first studied Russian at the Sorbonne before entering the Paris University of interpreters and translators (ESIT).

In 1995 Unifrance, an organisation for the promotion of French cinema abroad, appointed him their Central and Eastern European manager. For more than fifteen years he has been working with the Cannes Film Festival, drawing up a short-list of films from the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe and since 2006 he has been selecting Eastern European films for the Locarno Film Festival as well. He was a member of the cinema think-tank “L’Exception” (2000-2004). Following several years spent as a research worker at the Culture and Communications Laboratory at Avignon University, in September 2009 he was officially appointed associate professor. Joël Chapron has also written numerous articles on film-making in Eastern Europe, both for the French and foreign press . In 2011 in Russia he published a survey: The Principles and Structure Governing the Financing of French Cinema, in collaboration with Priscilla Gessati (ed. Azbuka-Attikus, in Russian). He is a member of the editorial staff of the forthcoming edition of the Larousse Dictionary of Cinema (due to appear in 2011), is collaborating on a book edited by Emmanuel Ethis, a lecturer in Information and Communication Sciences at the University of Avignon and the Vaucluse, entitled Les Belles ténébreuses, une sociologie des stars au cinéma (Dark Beauties, a sociological study of cinema stars) to be published by Armand Colin, and is also writing a history of French cinema in Russia.