Editor-in-chief for a day. Simon Abkarian and the force of creation

Over the black mask, the eye is lively, focused. Sometimes, in the news, a thunderstorm passes in his eyes. Other times, it is a smile that one guesses broad, and which once again multiplies the crow’s feet around the eyes. Simon Abkarian, comedian, author and director, was the editor of a day of Humanity. A very motivated editor-in-chief, who even wrote his editorial overnight. An editor-in-chief, above all, who kept the editorial conference in suspense on all subjects.

Because Simon Abkarian is a committed man and author. It is for this reason, moreover, that he accepted, without procrastinating, the proposal to come to Humanity, “A newspaper which resists by taking the side of the weak”, he said, computer open in front of him, impatient to resume writing his speeches in this Friday’s edition. And then, theater actor obliges, he wanted “To see a troop that gets together to work, in a common ideal, to say things that are not always audible or visible”.

Everything interests him, everything concerns him. Everything hurts him, too, in this world that is going awry. His speeches at the editorial conference go in all directions, often embellished with tasty anecdotes. With energy, he intervened on the event of the newspaper, devoted to cinema, by giving back its letters of nobility to “The imagination, humanity’s ultimate battlefield”, what we must “Take it all in hand”. He blasted “The disengagement of the State in cultural matters which brings us back to the time of kings and patrons”. He makes an annoyed gesture about the separatism law, and executes Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, with a dismissive “He must exist, this boy”. Ditto on the debt, on unemployment: analysis, anecdote, execution. Later, over lunch, he will lead a brisk discussion of the state of the world, from Lebanon to the Bahamas, from the United States to Turkey, in a back and forth twist of injustices.

Simon Abkarian has his hand on his heart and believes in the power of creation. And in that of the little people, “Of all people of good will, who are the most inaudible”, and to whom no space is given “Neither in the cinema, nor in the theater, nor in politics”.It is for them that he writes in these columns. But also in his pieces, as in the Last Day of the Fast, broadcast this evening on France 5 (see page 27). A piece that makes all the noise and violence in the world vibrate, with all that it can have that is more luminous and fraternal.