ALUMNI PORTRAIT 5

Alexandre Suzanne

Promo #1

Project: Playful

interviewed on 01/02/2024

Can you introduce yourself in a few words?

Alexandre, aged 29, with a background in biology, croissants and cinema, I'm often on the move to give talks on video games in cinemas, which is a great opportunity because I'm always on the move!

What prompted you to take part in the Futura Cinema incubation programme?

Joining an incubator was the right thing to do at that point in my career - I'd just finished my final dissertation at the Fémis (Exploitation) and I wanted to turn this data and my desire into a professional project.

Did you have a project when you joined the programme? If so, how did the programme contribute to its development? 

The Playful project started from three things:

- a personal interest in video games
- a love of cinemas
- and the observation that video games are a flourishing economic industry, but that they are not promoted in their own right in dedicated physical spaces. With the exception of exhibition halls and certain media libraries, video games have no face-to-face contact with the public, and remain a marginalised medium, practised by a domestic audience of insiders only.

Furthermore, in the context of cinema exhibition, cinemas are faced with the need to diversify their audiences, and to do this they are seeking to diversify their content. Video games and, more broadly, new digital writing offer audiences new narrative and interactive experiences, and their distribution is a real opportunity for cinemas.

Futura Cinema made a major contribution to the development of the project. Over the course of our work, the incubator has clarified our objectives and our framework for action, created an initial network of partners, a group of merrymakers and, above all, a team around which the project was truly born!

Do you have a highlight to share from your incubator adventure?

The least spectacular but very important: a morning at a progress meeting where we resolved a whole host of issues that had remained unresolved until then, in particular the legal form (we chose an association) and the name (‘Playful’ wasn't the original name!).

The coldest and funniest part: when we went to take some photos just after our final presentation to the jury at Les Arcs and it ended up in a snowball fight!

Today, has the project developed during the incubation year seen the light of day? What has it become?

Playful has been very active since it left the incubator, and continues to be so today - with almost 300 events and training courses held across the country. The association is continuing its role as a facilitator for the dissemination of video games in cultural venues, whether for mediators or cinemas. In response to new challenges, it is working to bring its group of contributors together as effectively as possible and is forging new partnerships with Belgium for 2024.