Simone Harari Baulieu

In 2005, Simone Harari Baulieu creates a new production group, Effervescence. A strong believer in eclecticism and refusing to lock viewers into predefined genres, she leads the Effervescence group to develop and produce not only innovative gameshows (Tout le monde veut prendre sa place aka “Hold on to Your Seat !”, Slam), TV magazines (FUTUREMAG), specials (A nos 100 ans ! – Here’s to our 100 years!), but also TV Movies (Accusé Mendès France –The Mendès France Trial, La Rupture – An Unlikely Alliance) as well as documentaries (Le Piège du Massilia – Treachery at Sea; La Droite a-t-elle tué Nicolas Sarkozy – Did the Right kill Nicolas Sarkozy?; The French Pill, A Revolution for Women).

Simone Harari brings to the industry a lot of experience. In 1984 she founded Télé Images, a TV production and distribution group. She became well known for Maguy, the first French produced sitcom, which had a huge success and remained on the air for 8 years. Under her leadership, Télé Images produced a number of ground breaking TV shows in many genres: primetime fiction (more that 50 TV movies such as L’Affaire Dominici, Si j’étais lui, Colomba), daytime soaps and sitcoms (more than 1800 episodes of series such as Marc et Sophie or Vivement lundi), documentaries (more than 40 documentary specials and more than 20 documentary series), gameshows (Questions Pour Un Champion, Que le Meilleur Gagne – gameshows adapted from formats by Reg Grundy), animation (more than 20 series), entertainment magazines (more than 600 episodes). Télé Images brought together and nurtured a talented pool of scriptwriters, directors, and actors introducing workflows and methods unknown until then in an industry which had mostly a “film d’auteurs” approach as a key frame of reference.

From 2003 through 2007, Simone Harari was also President of the USPA (French TV Producers Trade Association).

While engaged in her production activities, Simone Harari has also participated in the French Government Commission for the future of publicly funded Television in 2008. She is the recipient of many prestigious awards and has been named an Officer of the Légion d’Honneur and a Commander of the National Order of Merit.

She is the author of a number of works, including La Télé Déchaînée, published by Flammarion in 2009 and La Chaîne et le Réseau, published by les Editions de l’Observatoire in 2018.

Simone Halberstadt Harari is a graduate of both the Paris School of Political Science and E.N.A. (The National School of Administration – Class of 1976 – Guernica).