Rex Ingram's Nice, France facility

[sepiatone]

In a 1993 book by Liam O'Leary called REX INGRAM: MASTER OF THE SILENT CINEMA there is an aerial pic of his Nice studios and the size of the place looked to be the size of MGM's Culver City plant. Anybody have a good idea of the size of his studio or what happened to it?

[Mike Gebert]

Well, yeah, it was the Victorine Studios, which had quite an illustrious, if also quite a checkered history:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/movies/13kenn.html" target="_blank

[Rick Lanham]

It seems to currently have ten stages. Here is their web site:

http://www.euromedia-france.com/studio/studios-riviera/" target="_blank

Rick

[barry byrne]

This studio features prominently in "Day for Night"

[studiobooks]

My wonderful Silent Movies Calendar tells me that today is Rex Ingram's birthday, and I thought I would resurrect this thread with a request for possible updates on the status of Victorine Studios. I have looked at the Euro Media site, and read the 2007 NY Times article, and also a short blog from 2012 from something called Riviera Buzz which pretty much repeats the NYT information. Unfortunately, I don't read French - that hinders my casual research. Does anyone know if the rumors that the city of Nice might be planning to develop the property into housing units in 2018 are still just rumors?

I am well into one of my Christmas presents, Ruth Barton's bio of Ingram, and I also just watched Day For Night (which has some wonderful aerial shots of the studio as it was in 1972/73). Ingram is such an interesting and mysterious figure to me, even with this new book to shed some more light - it would be sad to see one of his contributions to silent film, his studio, lost to us. Any speculation or information would be most welcome!