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Posted on Tuesday, 24 April 2007 |
 The world’s most prestigious film festival and the donor of cinema’s big prize, the Palme d’Or, is still the centre of the world film universe for 11 days in May.
Screenings run 24 hours a day, the rich and the beautiful strut their stuff on the glittering Croisette, a-list cocktail parties, extravagant lunches, a palpable buzz and random encounters with icons of cinema make it a stroboscopic blur.
But behind the spectacle of glamourous starlets and red carpets, there is something much more lasting, the pedigree of history.
For its 60th anniversary, the festival’s President Gilles Jacob and artistic director Thierry Fremaux have commissioned 33 short films about the experience of watching films at Cannes from filmmakers like as: Michael Cimino, Lars von Trier, Manoel de Oliveira, Theo Angelopoulos and last year's Palme d'Or winner Ken Loach ("The Wind That Shakes The Barley").
The anthology film project (entitled "To Each His Own Cinema") is just one of many celebratory tributes that will light a candle on the festival’s birthday cake. Other special events include screenings of "Lindsay Anderson/Never Apologize" (Mike Kaplan), "Brando" (Leslie Greif), Steven Soderbergh’s "Ocean’s Thirteen" and "Sicko," Michael Moore’s scathing comedy about "45 million people with no health care in the richest country on earth."
BAFTA award nominee Wong Kar Wai opens the festival with his first English language film "My Blueberry Nights," a road movie about a woman’s search for love starring Jude Law, Tim Roth and singer Norah Jones in her acting debut.
Highlights of the other 20 films in the main competition include "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (Julian Schnabel), "The Man From London" (Bela Tarr), "Zodiac" (David Fincher), "No Country for Old Men" (Joel and Ethan Cohen) and the animated "Persepolis," based on the graphic novel autobiography by Iranian author Marjane Satrapi.
Some of the remarkable celebrities expected to navigate the gathered throng of photographers, journalists and fans include: Diane Kruger, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone, Rachel Weisz, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Aishwarya Rai, Al Pacino, Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, Kelly Macdonald, Javier Bardem, Robert Downey Jr., Bono and Asia Argento.
This will surely be Festival to remember. |
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