Serge Bromberg, director of the company Lobster Films, specializing in film restoration, will be tried from this Tuesday, November 22 for manslaughter, involuntary injury and endangerment of others, after a fatal fire in a building in Vincennes where nitrate reels were stored which left two dead in the summer of 2020. The trial, scheduled for two days, will end on Wednesday.
In the middle of a heat wave, these highly flammable nitrate reels caught fire in a basement room owned by Lobster Films, with poorly insulated walls and where the air conditioning had not been turned on. The violent fire also ravaged the neighboring building before being brought under control 6 hours later. During his hearing, Serge Bromberg claimed that he was not aware that he kept so many nitrate reels. He estimates their number at 965, for a total weight of 970 kilos. The investigators rather estimate that the number of reels was between 1,364 and 1,935 for a total weight ranging from 2.5 to 3.6 tons.
With so many reels, they should have filed for a storage authorization request with the prefecture, which was not the case. It is forbidden to store nitrate reels under dwellings, and the condominium of the building was not aware of what was stored in this room. During his hearing, Serge Bromberg claimed "not to have thought" of turning on the air conditioning in the room during the heat wave. Above all, the former artistic director of the Annecy Festival indicated that the CNC carried, in his opinion, the responsibility of recovering its reels. “On numerous occasions, and repeatedly, mainly verbally and in-person, I insisted on the urgency of taking my boxes of nitrate reels, the number of which was increasing,” he defends himself.
A CNC official explained to investigators that the obligation of the public institution was "to keep the nitrate reels under the conditions outlined by law, but in no case to recover all the nitrate reels." According to Serge Bromberg, he is a "passionate collector" who "was not aware of what could happen."