About

Patrice Boiteau was born in Limoges, France, and has shared his life between Asia and Europe for thirty years.

A prolific producer of academic, cultural and artistic events, lecturer, photographer, author, specialist in cinema and audiovisual media, he is mainly recognized in Japan for his initiatives at the head of the Osaka European Film Festival, which he led for 20 years.

In the field of cinematographic events, among the dozen festivals with which he has been associated, let us mention two of them held in France: “Aspects du Cinéma Français des Années 80, a festival of which he was co-director in 1981 while he was still only a student, and which offered to take a new look at young French cinema, and the “International Pre-Film Festival”, held in 1986 in Paris and Cannes, of which he was director, and which allowed professionals to familiarize themselves with the notion of pre-film (model produced at the stage of financing a film).

Among the events produced in Japan, note that he was co-director of the first major film festival devoted to French cinema outside of Tokyo. Originally produced to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the YTV television channel, one of the particularities of the event was that it was held in two parts: a first part on the airwaves of the TV station with the daily broadcast of one or two films for 12 days, and a second part in the halls of the city of Osaka in October 1988.

Finally, it should be remembered that he was the President of the organizing committee of the Osaka European Film Festival which, aiming to strengthen cultural, educational and international ties between Japan and European countries, has offered unprecedented visibility to a multitude of artists and films produced in Europe and Japan between 1994 and 2013.

In the audiovisual production sector, he has participated in all stages of film production and promotion. He was notably production manager for “Today in France” the bi-weekly magazine produced for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Agence Image Information.

He is also the director and producer of two remarkable short films: “Paysage avant l’été”, a film selected, among others, at the 40th Cannes Film Festival (Perspectives du Cinéma Français) and recipient of the quality label awarded by the National Center for Cinematography, and “Café noir”, starring Christopher Buchholz.

In 2023 and 2025, together with Belgian composer Raf Keunen, he co-produced the first two short films directed by journalist and film director Olivier Kazuma.

In the field of cultural events, it has produced more than 200 events. He was, among other things, the curator of the exhibition “The disappeared world of Visconti and the gaze of Kishin Shinoyama” (Il mondo scomparso di Visconti et lo sguardo di Kishin Shinoyama), the first monumental exhibition of the world-renowned Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama devoted to the world of Luchino Visconti, held in 2007 at the Italian Cultural Center in Paris.

He was also a member of the founding committee, then of the executive committee of the ART-EX program, a Japanese-European artist exchange program funded by the Osaka Prefectural Cultural Foundation.

In the field of theatrical production, he participated as light designer and light manager in the creation of the stage version of “Hiroshima mon amour” written by Marguerite Duras and directed by Michael Lonsdale (a show for which he supervised the tour in France, Switzerland, Korea and Japan), “Les fils du soleil” written by Christopher Hampton (adapted for the cinema under the title of “Total Eclipse”), and in Japan for “Le jeu de Marion et Robin”, the first French secular musical piece, directed by Akira Shigeyama, one of Kyogen's most famous actors and directors.

In the academic field, he was one of the very first teachers in France to teach a course on the history and aesthetics of cinema in middle school and high school, and he is currently a lecturer in 4 universities in Kansai where he teaches French, and supervises a seminar devoted to cinema.

He has given numerous conferences and participated in debates on subjects relating to the popularization of culture and art, or aimed at responding to the curiosity of specialists in the field of audiovisual production.

Having reconnected with one of his first childhood loves, photography, his works have since 2016 been exhibited in around sixty exhibitions in Japan, the Philippines and France.

In November 2021, La Renaissance Française (Association recognized as being of public utility placed under the high patronage of the President of the French Republic), awarded him the Gold Medal for cultural influence. An official ceremony was held at French Embassy in Tokyo on July 5, 2022.