THE FESTIVAL 2005 by Véronique Cayla (Managing Director)
Cannes May 11-21, 2005
Continuing along the same path as the reflections of Gilles Jacob, we will begin the Festival with a Rencontre that will take place the day before the Opening, on Tuesday May 10th.
We are bringing together the film directors of the Juries to reflect on the future of festivals like ours. We have chosen these filmmakers, who come from all over the world, for the quality of their work, for their passion for cinema and their curiosity about the work of others. They are the people who can best help us project ourselves into the future and tell us what a Festival like Cannes can and should do to help film creation.
Is it enough to show the best films of the year? Should we, early on, take care of artists whose emerging work we are eagerly awaiting? We have already started along this path by creating the Cinéfondation. How can we take this initiative further? And then later on, what can we do to help the films we have selected to be seen by film lovers all over the world? Does the existing film distribution process suffice for transforming a desire for cinema into a love of film?
These questions and many others will be at the heart of our discussion during the Rencontre du Festival.
In the same mindset of opportune encounters that are needed for creation, this year we are launching L'Atelier du Festival. The Cinéfondation has chosen, with the help of the network of the Résidence du Festival, eighteen film projects from eighteen different countries that we would like to see one day on the big screen. They are artistically mature enough to stimulate our desire yet insufficiently funded for the moment to be able to go into production. For several months already, the energy of the Festival and the Cinéfondation has been working to help bring their project to fruition. We have sent "Le Livre des Projets", which details each of the projects, to producers all over the world who might be interested in them. During the Festival, a whole series of encounters will be organised for each of the filmmakers. The objective is for, at the end of the Festival, most of these projects to become reality and for you to be able to discover them, in a year or two, at Cannes, for example!
Finally, this year we are opening a new theatre. It is called Cinéma du monde. Designed by Patrick Bouchain, it is located in the Village International-Pantiero and is the prototype of a new generation of temporary theatres. The theatre will enable us to promote the diversity of world cinema, at a time when one might fear it is seriously at risk from the globalisation of the film industry.
Every day, a different country chosen for its creativity and originality, will provide a programme showing the multiple facets of its cultural and cinematographic expression.
Seven countries are taking part in the adventure with us: Morocco, which is inaugurating this first season on the evening of May 13th, South Africa, Austria, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Mexico and Peru.
In common agreement with the Festival, each country has composed a programme of recent films, which paint seven very different portraits and yet are totally complementary to the cinema presented by the Official Selection.
These are most often films based in troubled, recent times and territories, which were not made for foreign audiences: it is therefore a cinema that we are not used to seeing. Among the seven countries, three of them (Austria, Sri Lanka and Mexico) also have one or more films in the Official Selection. You will be able to see for yourselves how the fruit of the Selection grows out of the cultural identity that is brought to light in this new theatre.
In summary, a reflection on the future of the Festival from which you will have the results on May 10th, l'Atelier the progress of which you can follow throughout the Festival, and Tous les Cinémas du Monde which I invite you to discover. The three innovations this year symbolise the desire of the Festival to put its efforts behind diversity and opening onto the world.
Finally, if I have not mentioned the Séance des enfants, the Journée de l'Europe, the Leçon de Cinéma, the Leçon d'acteur - this year provided by Catherine Deneuve - the Leçon de musique and other events, it is because they are detailed in other areas of this press book.