As in Bordeaux, Lille or even Lyon a handful of weeks ago, the arrival of Gérard Depardieu, in Marseille this time, went badly. The actor is indeed expected this Wednesday in the Silo room for a concert in which he performs covers of the singer Barbara. He is also expected by feminist groups who denounce these representations while Gérard Depardieu has been indicted for “rape” and “sexual assault” since 2020 for facts denounced by actress Charlotte Arnould in 2018. Last April, thirteen other women also accused him of sexual violence, in a series of testimonies collected by Mediapart.
“His arrival is a problem for us. This all the more so since he sings Barbara, who herself was the victim of sexual violence and incest which she denounced in particular in The black Eagle. That this man takes up these songs is not tolerable, ”sums up Iris, 32, a Marseillaise member of the collective Les Assises Lesbiennes. With ten other associations, they signed a collective letter addressed to the mayor of Marseilles asking for the cancellation of this concert planned at the Silo, a theater owned by the city.
“Gérard, the black eagle, it’s you”
The activists, however, intend to demonstrate their opposition and their anger and call for a rally in front of the concert hall at 7 p.m., an hour and a half before the start of the concert. In particular, it plans to deploy a banner bearing these words: “Gérard, the black eagle, it’s you”. “Our goal is at least to appeal to passers-by and spectators,” continues Iris.
In Lyon, on May 27, five activists burst onto the front of the stage, disrupting the smooth running of the concert. In April, in Lille, it was access to the hall, prohibited by a hundred demonstrators, which had delayed the start of the show by about an hour. The tour of “Depardieu sings Barbara” is thus almost systematically disrupted. Its production, Becker’s Prod, recently announced in a press release that two of its dates, initially scheduled for Le Havre on June 11 and Chambéry on June 14, have been canceled. This, for room filling reasons, ensured production at Parisian.