French Riviera Travel News

Archive for the ‘Cannes Film Festival’ Category

It was touch and go for a while but finally my badge for the Cannes Film Festival came through and I headed to Cannes to pick it up. Just as the counter lady typed my information into the computer she frowned. Another assistant come rushing over and explained that the computers were down.  As we waited for them to reboot, I asked the woman if the storms from last week were continuing to gum up the system. No, she explained. It was the volcano that was disrupting arrivals.

It seemed a little quieter than usual but hardly DOA. Cote d’Azur tourist officials announced a banner weekend of hotel reservations partly because of the Cannes Film Festival.

After depositing my 10-ton bag in the cloakroom I went to the movies! Since I didn’t have time to research, I took the path of least resistance which led to an Agnes Varda film, the 1969 hippiegram “Lions, Love . . .and Lies” starring the luminous Viva of Warhol fame and the two guys who came up with “Hair”. Looking very much the aging hippie with her bi-coloured hair, Ms Varda was on hand to present her film.

Then it was time for Happy Hour! The Short Film Corner sponsors a 5pm Happy Hour which attracts a young crowd, mostly from the American Pavillion. With my prestigious badge, I was quickly targeted by a nervous young guy who wanted to know who I was “with”. He was “with” Sprankle Studios and had directed a short film for them. No sooner had I edged away than another young man rushed over to introduce himself and his short film. “It’s about sign-spinners.” “What?” “If you have seven minutes you can see it!” “Well, I. . .” He whipped out his Ipad which immediately piqued my interest. Before I knew it, I had headphones on and the opening credits started to roll. Human Traffic King was the catchy title and it was about, well, those people that spin signs out there in America. Who knew? Grade: A+ for hustle; A for originality and a solid B for execution.

I finished off the day with a short documentary about Catherine Destivelle, the world champion rock climber. It made me want to visit the beautifully-photographed Alps that was a setting for her exploits but stay far, far away from those horrid, steep cliffs.

Azuriens awoke to a steady drumbeat of radio, tv and newspaper reports this morning assessing the damage wreaked by yesterday’s furious storm. It isn’t pretty. The 10-meter waves that pummelled the coast from Menton to Theole-sur-Mer swept away rows of beach restaurants as though they were children’s sand castles. The plagistes in charge of maintaining the establishments were devastated. Most were just in the process of readying the lounge chairs, parasols, tables, beverage services and kitchens in preparation for the summer season only to find nothing but sand and rocks where their livelihood had been.

The damage on Nice beaches was terrible but the situation in Cannes is desperate. The Cannes Film Festival opens in only a week and festival-goers depend on the luxuriously-appointed Cannes beaches for everything from afternoon cocktails to exclusive midnight parties. OK, maybe’s it’s not as desperate as fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, but still. Our beautiful Cote d’Azur has little going on economically except tourism. Tarnish our sun ‘n sea reputation and what do we have? Shopping? Yes. Fine dining? That too. Culture? Sometimes. But our main selling point is the beaches. If they go, you might as well stay in Moscow.

The Cannes Film Festival has just announced that director Tim Burton will be Jury President for the 63rd Cannes Film Festival to be held from May 12to 23.
Upon accepting the invitation from Gilles Jacob and Thierry Frémaux, Tim Burton declared
“After spending my early life watching triple features and 48-hour horror movie marathons, I’m finally ready for this. It’s a great honour
and I look forward, with my fellow jurors,
to watching some great films from around the world. When you think of Cannes you think of world cinema. And as films have always been like dreams to me, this is a dream come true.

Read more about the Cannes Film Festival.

Poverty sucks, whether in the Australian outback of “Samson and Delilah” or in the central Harlem of “Precious”.  Seeing these two strong entries in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Official Selection raised some interesting questions about the nature of poverty and what to do about it. Although the subject matter was bleak in both cases, each filmmaker found cause for hope without betraying the material.

Samson and Delilah are aborigines living in hot, insect-ridden isolation, suffering ‘ain’t-no-food-in-the-fridge’ poverty. Government handouts keep them from starving to death but director Warwick Thornton meticulously records the  tedium and fury of dead-end lives. White people are mostly absent from their lives, creeping in only to weasel away aboriginal paintings to sell at a huge profit. Battling violence, hunger and addiction the two teenage protagonists eventually find a measure of solace in each other.

Precious, of the eponymous film, has plenty of white people around trying to straighten out her life and plenty of burgers to fatten her up. As a Harlem teenager, pregnant with her father’s child, Precious’ main battle is with her ferocious mother. Played with demonic energy by Mo’nique, she is the mother of all welfare queens. (So this is why President Clinton insisted on ending welfare). White people are there to be massaged into continuing the welfare checks but ultimately it’s a government literacy program that saves Precious. Her white principal guides her into the program and a white social worker, played by Mariah Carey, pushes Precious to confront her horrific past.

Neither Delilah nor Precious end up alone. Delilah has the severely limited Samson and Precious has her babies. Each movies ends with a hint of the redemptive power of art; Delilah applies herself to an aboriginal painting and Precious seems determined to find her writer’s voice. It’s a woman’s world after all.

Two films took on the ’60s this weekend at the Cannes Film Festival with radically different perspectives. For Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman directors of “Soundtrack for a Revolution”, the decade was defined by the quiet heroism of the civil rights movement. For Ang Lee, director of “Taking Woodstock” the real revolution was internal as old social strictures gave way to exuberant self-expression. So, twice this weekend I walked away from the movie thinking “Did that really happen? Were we really like that?”

“Soundtrack for a Revolution” showed how the  songs of the civil rights movement shored up the courage those who  insisted on equality for black people in the face of beatings, lynchings, hosings and arrests. Interpreted by modern artists such as Joss Stone and John Legend, the old marching melodies “We Shall Overcome” “We shall not be moved” evoke an era when non-violent protest finally dragged the American South out of apartheid. The scenes of police turning dogs on black children, the photo montage of murdered civil rights workers, Martin Luther King speaking as if possessed: we’ve seen the images before but the emotional intensity seems to reach across the decades demanding respect for the aging heros of America’s ‘revolution’.

Ang Lee looks on the lighter side. In “Taking Woodstock” the famous festival serves as a catalyst that propels the hero, Eliot, out of his parents’ suffocating embrace and into acceptance of his own homosexuality. Eliot Tiber was a main player in bringing Woodstock to Bethel, NY and was one of the writers of “Taking Woodstock” recounting the whole behind-the-scenes effort.  There are some hilarious scenes and a pitch-perfect rendering of the period dialect: “far out”, “that’s very cool”, “groovy”. Jonathan Groff as festival organizer Michael Lang is dead-on as a 60s hustler. Lee even captures the spaciness and wonder of an acid trip.

And at the end of this delightful movie, you can’t help but ask yourself, “How did we get from there to here?” How did the Woodstock generation elect George Bush? How did the spontaneous sexuality and unselfconscious nudity mutate into porn and plastic surgery? What happened to hairiness?  How did we get so fat? Why couldn’t the “three days of peace and music” last a lifetime?