2023-12-23 15:37:00

He is a figure of culture in all its forms who has just left us. Frank Cassenti, director, documentarian for cinema and television, theater director, guitarist and founder of the Jazz à Porquerolles festival died in the night from Friday to yesterday at the age of 78 in La Ciotat where he lived.

The world of culture mourns one of its most faithful servants, who has never stopped, throughout his existence, fighting to open it to as many people as possible.

Born in 1945 in Rabat in Morocco, he arrived in France at 16 years old. It was in Lille, where he studied cinema, that he might indulge his passions: cinema and music, which he even intertwined with various reports or documentaries on music and great figures of jazz.

Among his notable films, we can cite Hello, thieves! (1973), The Red Poster (1976), for which he won the Jean Vigo prize, or even The Song of Roland (1978) et The taste of strawberries (1998).

Multiple hats

Very involved and committed to access to culture for all, he was part of the creation of the collective “La culture, ça urge”, in La Ciotat in 2020, which fights to defend all cultural places. A militant and determined side that he has always carried in his genes and which he has never ceased to transcribe through his films and documentaries.

“Frank Cassenti left us, leaving us his films, his texts, his music… and a great sadness. He was one of the initiators of our collective, La Culture ça Urgent and has never ceased, since then, to put your talent, your humanism, at the service of all the actions that we have imagined and carried out togetherrecalled the collective as a tribute. He liked to quote Stéphane Hessel to remind us that “to create is to resist”. Anti-fascist and pacifist, he was always ready to mobilize to push back nauseating ideas. Frank left before the last Lumière session, which he did not want to see end…”

A man of many hats, Frank Cassenti was also an authentic jazzman, as he proved as artistic director of the Jazz à Porquerolles festival or with guitar in hand when he decided to play the standards he knew like the back of his hand …

Burial Thursday

In 2020, he made Change the world, which tells the story of the 20 years of the Porquerolles festival, its baby. A nice nod for this event founded with Archie Shepp and Aldo Romano in 2002 and which has since continued to grow and attract the biggest names in jazz to the jazz scene. pearl of the golden islands. An event where jazz is not only approached from the perspective of spectacle but is part of an art of living.

“Frank Cassenti was someone who, with great simplicity and talent, made jazz known in Hyères, underlined the city’s mayor Jean-Pierre Giran. Jazz à Porquerolles has become a great classic and jazz lovers and others are saddened by such a disappearance. I am sure that a few notes will resonate in Porquerolles in the coming nights…”

“He was an exemplary figure of culture, cinema and music, with whom I experienced an adventure as exciting as it was improbableadds François Carassan, deputy for culture. Culture, which was at the heart of his life, represented the essential: that which gives meaning to existence and carries the desire to “change life”.