Growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, Dana Davidson Theveneau developed two passions: the cinema and France. She explained to Patrick Middleton how they brought her to the Côte d’Azur and to running the Studios Riviera/La Victorine

“There wasn’t much to do in Des Moines when I was growing up there in the Sixties. I got passionate about the cinema because my mother was a great film buff. We used to watch all the old black and white movies on television and we’d go to film theatres in the city to see the latest releases. I didn’t dream like some kids did of becoming an actress but I felt certain I’d get involved with the film business. As to my interest in France and the French, that was a pure accident and a very lucky one. In high school, I signed up for Spanish but there were too many applicants and I got shunted off to French. Quelle chance! We had a marvellous young woman teacher and I became fascinated by everything French, including the cinema. Of course, not many French films made it to Des Moines.”

“A chance and a challenge”

“Almost inevitably I ended up with a French husband – that’s how I became Dana Davidson Theveneau. I met him at the University of California and he was mad about cinema, too, and we seemed made for each other. Eventually we moved to France and were involved in various projects together.

We lived in the Var – where we still are, by the way – and one thing that struck me was what a potential the area had for film making, with its varied landscape and good climate. I started as a freelance volunteer advisor but then people in local government began to realise that I was doing something useful and they launched the Var Film Commission which I was asked to head up in 1995. Basically, my job was to persuade producers for cinema, television and commercials to come to the Var. That meant I had to make everything easy for them – slicing through red tape and enabling them to work in the best conditions possible and also helping them to raise funding. It was hard at first but the Commission was soon recognised as a success – in a single year we clocked up over a thousand hours of shoots – and its example has been followed in other parts of France.”

What brought her to Nice? “Two things, I suppose. I’d been working in the Var for fourteen years and I was looking for a change and a challenge. And then I was fascinated by the history of La Victorine, the oldest working film studios in Europe – they were opened on 1919 – but I knew they had fallen on bad times.” What did that mean exactly? “There were local problems: the place had become rather run down and relations with the city authorities were poor. In a wider context, as a place to make films the Côte d’Azur has now to compete with locations as diversely attractive as the Czech Republic and British Columbia and most of them are cheaper. On the other hand, I could see some plus points: first, the history would appeal to a lot of people. When Rowan Atkinson was here recently making Mr Bean 2 he was fascinated to hear about the times when the young Hitchcock and Marcel Carné and François Truffaut worked here. You can’t walk around for long without recalling something: the pool which Rowan noticed was put in especially for Elizabeth Taylor when she was here for The Comedians. The other big advantage we have is, as in the Var, a good climate and access to varied landscapes.”

“Coming back to vigorous life”

How does she rate her first year at the studios? “Well, as I said, I took the job as a challenge and that’s what it’s been. Firstly, the place was a mess and it wasn’t improved by the way the previous owners left, stripping out almost anything that was moveable. We’ve had to spend the first twelve months renovating, modernising everything from power supply to sewage disposal and upgrading the studios to state-of-the-art level. Another advantage is that we’ve got on site a wide range of companies providing ancillary services from casting to post-production work. But this is the Côte d’Azur, after all, and I found t

hat some rather dubious characters had set up here. I had to get rid of them and I did and now I’m very happy with the people we’ve got here.”

So how does she see the immediate future? “We’ve got things going now – when I say ‘we’ I’m talking about myself and my colleagues Christian and Judith Duc who look after the technical and administrative side. We can offer to producers an excellent package of services at what we feel is a competitive price. As I said, we’ve just had Mr Bean 2 here and we’re doing well with commercials – we’ve recently had shoots for Toyota, McDonald’s and the Sunday Telegraph. Currently, we’re in negotiation with both French and foreign film and television products. And we got some great news the other day when Christian Estrosi came to see us: the Conseil général is going to invest seriously in developing film production in the department and that’ll be very good for us. I’m sure that Riviera Studios – the locals still call it La Victorine – is coming back to vigorous life.” And that means, surely, that the girl from Des Moines is very happy? “Absolument! I’m working in the film business and I’m living in France. C’est la belle vie!”

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