Industry, cinema and him

“History is repeating itself. »The tone is not fatalistic even if, like his father before him, Eric Lenoir first “never thought”. Never the family company. Never the industry. Never Seri. But fate caught up with him in November 2001, “at a time when the company was approaching a turning point”, he justifies. Once again, necessity prevailed. The executive of Tat Express (now FedEx France) gave in to the sirens of heredity to walk in the footsteps of Félix, Jean, Dominique Lenoir. In their hands, in a century, the foundries of Châtellerault have become Seri, specialist in street furniture, a group of 230 employees and 45M€ in turnover. Eric was first the commercial director, then the general manager from 2006 and, finally, the president since 2020. “I would have liked to do Sciences Po confides the person concerned. But that was not an option. In the family, you had to be an engineer. Or else go to a business school…”The young man, born in Royan by chance on vacation, turned to Inseec in Bordeaux then to Sciences com in Nantes, “a school of freedom, with crazy entrepreneurial energy! », he recalls. As for military service, he did it with the Alpine hunters. “You will discover that your limits are constantly being pushed back”, repeated the lieutenant to them. At 58, the leader has not forgotten and he even ended up adopting the motto of the battalion: do not suffer.

Trainee of Luc Besson

“Before, I was a somewhat inert studenthe says seriously. I spent my days in bed reading and smoking. I also went to the cinema a lot, sometimes I saw five films a day. »His curriculum vitae bears no trace of the years during which he was “a kind of dormant potential”. His memories of youth, on the contrary, bear witness to a certain energy – the GR20 walked with friends at only 14 years old, the lifeguard certificate at sea… – and his mind is full of quotes, reflections, whole poems that we do not tamed only over time. Rimbaud’s Le Bateau ivre, Apollinaire’s Chanson du mal-aimé… And then there are all those film excerpts that his memory rewinds at will. Eric is 20 years old when he finds himself a stage manager on the set of Subway, by Luc Besson. Unforgettable. “I kept his cell phone for a long time, I never called him back…”. The cinema was “an inaccessible world”. The young enthusiast did not dare to push the door of the Institute of advanced cinematographic studies (today Fémis). “I stopped myself”, he agrees. Or had the time not yet struck…

The budding entrepreneur therefore put away the 7^e art, already ” vital “, in his free time, a thousand leagues from his growing professional responsibilities and his extra-professional activities as an industrial tribunal adviser, a member of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry or even a director of Futurallia. The cinema and more generally the arts have long remained this parallel universe in which he plunges to extract himself from the noise of the world and the news, to appease his revolts. “I’ve been impatient for a long time, but I’m learning to be patient. We rape the world and people when we are impatient” confides the one who readily describes himself as “impetuous” like Napoleon, the totemic figure of his Corsican maternal roots.

At the bedside of the cinema

Not to suffer, of course, but what to do in the face of his intimate wounds? After crossing “a very difficult time” a few years ago, the father of three grown-up daughters discovered meditation. “It is observation, neither subjective nor objective, he explains against popular belief. It is useless! As Freud wrote, healing comes in addition. Meditation just creates a different relationship to things. » He who simply wanted “learn to love”took a liking to it, to the point of wanting to soon set up a school of meditation and initiation to modern art in Jaunay-Marigny. The entrepreneur, patron of the Orchester des Champs-Elysées, has also created an endowment fund for the loan of musical instruments. “It’s great to have the means to do this! he exclaims. Art is expensive. I don’t like luxury, I like earning a living, good restaurants, travelling…” And the cinema, that of Truffaut in particular.

On November 27, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Chinon cinema, between two screenings, Eric Lenoir will speak “cinema permanence”in chosen words, with the erudition of the one who has read“intimately” all the Cahiers du cinema, from number 360 to today, but also backwards to the first. The unprecedented crisis that affected the magazine in 2019 could not leave him indifferent.“The editorial staff was on fire, the printer no longer wanted to print. »The industrial took over. The challenge was daunting but“I am a knight”, he jokes. Then, more seriously:“You can’t be afraid of fear all the time. »In a window of his office in Châtelleraud, on a black and white photo posed there, without frame, like a family memory that we would have printed in a hurry, we readily imagine Eric Rohmer playing the soundtrack on the piano of this life between two worlds.