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MUMBAI: The 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in France
takes place from 16-27 May 2007.
Because the Festival's Anniversary is a homage to artists,
it will be celebrated by a film, To Each His Own Cinema,
both a personal and collective work. 35 renowned directors
including Ken Loach, Atom Egoyan, Walter Salles, Lars Von
Trier, Wim Wenders had carte blanche to come up with a three
minute film focused on that institution known as the "movie
theatre".
Canadian artist Robert Carsen, who recently directed Leonard
Bernstein's Candide at the Théâtre du Châtelet,
has created an on-stage introduction to the film for the Théâtre
Lumière. The world premiere of To Each His Own Cinema
takes place on 20 May 2007 and will air the same evening on
Canal +.
India to have a presence: The festival shall celebrate
the co-anniversaries of the 60 years of Indian independence
and 60 of the Cannes Film Festival by inviting India to inaugurate
iys Tous les Cinémas du Monde programme. Indian film
will be shoacsed on 19 and 20 May. The organisers though note
that two days of screening will barely suffice to celebrate
that vast continent of cinema, that profusion of styles, languages
and religions.
Cinema from Lebanon, Poland, Africa, Colombia and Slovenia
will be celebrated on the following days.
A highlight of the festival will be The Cinema Masterclass
which will be conducted by Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese
The Departed. The Actor's Masterclass will be conducted
by by Sergio Castellito. The Music Masterclass will be conducted
by Oscar winning composer Howard Shore The Lord Of The
Rings in the presence of director David Cronenberg A
History Of Violence. There will also be a tribute to the
late actor Henry Fonda On Golden Pond in the presence
of his daughter Jane Fonda.
On 20 May a public concert of film music will be held on
Plage Macé, with the participation of the Traffic Quintet,
DJ Wax Taylor, artist Ange Leccia and video directors from
Divan du Monde who will come to revisit the images and film
music of Cannes.
There will also be a seminar on Cinema, towards the audiences
of tomorrow. Motion-picture and new media professionals,
journalists and sociologists will debate on 16 May 2007 the
ties between cinematic creation, new promotional and broadcast
platforms, and the evolution of audience practices.
Europe Day: The Festival de Cannes will host the 5th
Europe Day, on 26 May reuniting the European Ministers of
Culture and well-known figures of cinema to further explore
the reflections of the Opening Forum and seek political solutions
to the mutations of the digital landscape.
A new site: Before the opening of the Festival de
Cannes, the new website will be launched: with its innovative
structure, modern aesthetics and ergonomic navigation.
www.festival-cannes.com will offer the lion's share to news
events in photos and videos during the event itself, offers
on-line services and makes available to journalists all information
on the programme as well as updates.
22 Films Competing For The Palm D'Or: 22 movies are
competing for the Palm D'Or. They include Death Proof
from Quentin Tarantino. In 1994 Tarantino stunned people when
Pulp Fiction won the prize. He is joined by another
American filmmaker Gus Van Sant who is present with Paranoid
Park. His film Elephant had won a prize at Cannes
a few years back. David Fincher's Zodiac about the
hunt for a San Francisco serial killer is also competing.
Asian filmmaker Wong Kar Wai's My Blueberry Nights
is the opening film in the competition.
Other films in competition include James Gtay's We Own
The Night, Naomi Kawase's Mogari The Mourning Forest,
KIM Ki Duk's Breath Emir Kusturica's Promise Me
This and Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine. The closing
film at Cannes is Denys Arcand's L’Âge Des Tenebres
which is not in competition.
There will be Hollywood glamour courtesy Ocean's Thirteen.
The film with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Andy Garcia, Matt
Damon will have its premiere and will not be in competition.
Michael Moore's Sicko will also premiere out of competition
which is a little surprising considering that his previous
film Farenheit 9/11 won the Palm D'Or a few years back.
British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart
will also air out of competition.
There will also be midnight screenings of Olivier Asayas'
Boarding Gate, Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales, Catherine
Owens and Mark Pellington's sU2 3D ’
Jury members: British Oscar nominated filmmaker filmmaker
Stephen Frears The Queen will head the festival jury.
The other members are Asian actress Maggie Cheung, Australian
Oscar nominated actress Toni Collette The Sixth Sense,
European actress and director Maria De Medeiros, Canadian
actress Sarah Polley who recently made her directorial debut,
Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk,
French actor and director Michel Piccoli and Mauritania filmmaker
Abderrahmane Sissako.
Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang ke will head the short films
jury. The other members are Iranian actress Niki Karimi, American
costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis, French writer J.M.G.
Le Clezio, and French director Dominik Moll. The short films
in competition include Mark Albiston's Run from New
Zealand, Tim Thaddeus Cahill's The Oaote’s Valour
from the US, and Antonio Campos' The Last 15 also from
the US.
LE MARCHÉ DU FILM: This focusses on the international
motion picture business. It welcomes each and every year producers,
exporters, distributors and financiers, hailing from all five
continents. It claims to get around 10,000 attendees.
As of 14 April 2007 more than 3,000 companies from 80 different
countries have already already confirmed their participation,
attesting to the global attraction of the Marché du
Film as one of the cornerstones of the financial and artistic
montage of films and negotiation of coproduction contracts.
With more than 1,500 screenings, the Marché du Film
offers buyers a virtually infinite diversity of films. This
year once again the organisers state that everything has been
done to offer the best possible working conditions. A programme
of renovation by third parties is in progress in the screening
rooms. Two theatres have been equipped with digital projection.
Moreover, the Marché du Film is inaugurating a new
zone, baptised Lerins situated on the second floor of the
Riviera to welcome some twenty sales firms and four motion-picture
theatres.
The Marché du Film thus offers its 520 exhibitor companies
a framework to perform the greatest part of their annual turnover.
Producers Network: Launched in 2004, the Producers
Network is a programme whose aim is to accompany producers
in the international development of their projects. This "network
of networks" reunites more than 500 producers from
all five continents, notably those producers selected by the
most important coproduction markets.
The producers meet every morning around 16 thematic roundtables
where seasoned guests offer their expertise in production
and international financing.To further increase and enhance
meetings between producers, the Producers Network has added
this year to its programme two "speed-dating" sessions
on 17 and 18 May. The participants meet by groups of five
to six producers from different countries to exchange idea
and discuss their projects.
Cinado.Com: Launched in 2005, this is an international
film database. A reference tool for professionals all year
round and updated before each great international rendezvous
(Toronto, AFM, Berlin and Cannes) cinando.com is supported
by the Media Programme of the European Commission. Their website
contains information on some 6,500 companies and 10,000 active
titles (projects or completed works). In 2006 it registered
3,642,528 visited pages.
New filmmakers: The 2007 Atelier has selected 15 filmmaker
projects from 15 different countries. A tailor-made accompaniment
is offered to both the directors and their producers to help
finalise the financial assembly of their projects. This selection,
in the spirit of the festival privileges discovery with debut
films, while supporting as well the work in progress of recognised
artists.
Certain screenplays question human nature in the child, whether
it is in a world without God, the State and or a father, whether
in middle of the Amazonian forest (Salamandra), an Austrian
catholic boarding school between worship and sacrifice (Serviam),
or a small Korean town (Treeless Mountain). This research
continues on the adolescent who preserves in him something
pure and intact despite all the harshness being brought up
in a Romanian orphanage (A Heart-Shaped Balloon).
In the adult, it is a question of coming up with just the
right balance between what we feel and what we show, while
at the same time respecting divine will To Die Like a Man,
freeing ourselves of all principles of reality and living
the dream About War lying to oneself, even thinking
that everything can begin all over again (Blown by the
Typhoon) or yielding to the irrational Native Dancer.
In the end and from a more general point of view, it's the
journey of a soul through the four forms of life the four
times, or the quest of oneself in the face of the other.
Other projects offer a fresh look at social realities: an
invitation to see what binds us instead of wondering what
makes us different, as in the adventures in Colombia of two
tramps The Wind Journey, or a glance at the changes
in the way of life in a Turkish village Milk.
The theme of the war and violence is highly present in the
Lebanese I Can't Go Home, Sri Lankan The Fallen
and Moroccan Between Parentheses projects.
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