Issue 10: The Cannes International Film Festival Approaches
There's only one event in the world of film that gets me even more excited than the Oscars, and we're just a few days away from the 2016 edition.
Mesdames et messieurs, may I present to you: the 69th Cannes International Film Festival.
Though Cannes is the most well-known film festival in the world—and certainly among the largest—it isn't actually the oldest. That honor goes to the Venice Biennale (likely the subject of a future newsletter). The Cannes origin story is the stuff of film-buff legend. It was founded almost entirely out of a sense of nationalistic competition: Italy had a film festival, so France, naturally, needed to have its own film festival to show their neighbors to the east that they could do it better. When Venice launched their film festival in 1932, France wasted no time in putting together their own version. A committee of Frenchmen selected films from all over the world, among them The Wizard of Oz, to represent the greatest in cinematic achievements of the day and the venue was set for the luxurious coast city of Cannes. By 1939, all the preparations were finally in order and on September 1 the inaugural, 20-day Cannes Film Festival was set to begin.
That same morning, Hitler invaded Poland and the festival was summarily cancelled.
It wasn't until the end of World War II that Cannes finally got off the ground. The actual first festival was held in 1946, and has continued annually, more or less uninterrupted, until the present day.
Cannes isn't just an anual showcase for the greatest in world cinema: it's a nonstop party, a movie lover's Shangri-La; it's a platform for filmmakers to go deep with challenging works of art, but it's also a shallow parade of celebrities; all serious cineastes have their eyes on the main competition lineup to know what films to watch out for in the months to come, yet the festival is as much a buyer's market for producers to cut deals with distributors over movies the public never even gets to see (at this stage, at least). Cannes is a paradox, and that's why it's so thrilling to follow year after year.
This year's festival kicks off on May 11 and will feature new films from Pedro Almodóvar, the Dardenne brothers, Xavier Dolan, Jim Jarmusch, Jeff Nichols, Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy), Asghar Farhadi, Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive), Sean Penn (ha!), Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), and Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall) among others. In a word, this year is stacked.
The next issue of this newsletter will dive into the specifics of this year's festival and the word on the competition so far. Tune in again in two weeks for the scoop!
Articles, News, and Reviews
Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus? It just might happen.
🍋🐝⛪️
Why won't Hollywood cast Asian actors?
On a related note: Cannes loves to showcase the latest in Korean cinema—but giving that country top honors is another story entirely.
“We need less perfect but more free films.” Meet Jonas Mekas, the godfather of experimental film.
“[B]eing called ‘the greatest living actress’ — a designation not even my mother would sanction — is the opposite of good or valuable or useful. It is a curse for a working actor.” From Meryl Streep's mouth straight to her biographer's ears.
That sound you're hearing is the sound of a hundred freelance film critics gnashing their teeth over the end of Criticwire at Indiewire. Fittingly, one of their last posts is on the sustainability of film criticism. (The future is in the newsletter business, kids!)