The History Of The Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival, founded in 1939, is widely considered to be the world’s most prestigious film festival (leader of the “Big Five” festivals which also includes Venice, Berlin, Sundance, and Toronto).

In May 2006, Hollywood Reporter acknowledged that Cannes is the “granddaddy of all film festivals” (although the oldest film festival in the World, beginning in 1932, is the Venice Film Festival).

The private festival is held annually, once a year, (usually in May) in the resort town of Cannes, in the south of France.

The 60th Annual Cannes Film Festival will be held May 16 to 28, 2007.

History

At the end of the year 1938, shocked by the interference of the fascist governments of Germany and Italy in the selection of films for the Mostra de Venise, Jean Zay, the French Minister of National Education, decided, on the proposal of Philippe Erlanger, to create an international cinematographic festival in Cannes. In June 1939, Louis Lumière agreed to be the president of the first festival, set to begin on September 1, 1939. The declaration of war against Germany by France and the United Kingdom on September 3, 1939, however, postponed the festival’s premiere.

The festival was relaunched in 1946 and held from September 20, 1946 to October 5, 1946 in the old casino in Cannes.

The festival was not held in 1948 or 1950 on account of budgetary problems. In 1949 the Palais des Festivals was inaugurated. The original Palais was replaced by a new one in 1983.

The 1968 festival was halted on May 19, 1968. The day before, Louis Malle (president of the jury), François Truffaut, Claude Berri, Jean-Gabriel Albicocco, Claude Lelouch, Roman Polanski and Jean-Luc Godard took over the large room of the Palais and interrupted the projection of film in solidarity with students and labor on strike throughout France.

At the 25th Cannes International Film Festival, in 1971, Charlie Chaplin was awarded the Legion of Honor by French Minister of Culture M. Jacques Duhamel, and a dozen directors were honored by the festival, including Orson Welles (who was not present), Luis Bunuel, Federico Fellini, William Wyler, Rene Clement, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Lindsay Anderson, Vojtech Jasny, Masaki Kobayashi and Robert Bresson.[1]

The 59th Cannes Film Festival was held from May 17, 2006 to May 28, 2006. The Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai was the president of the jury for feature films. He was also the first Chinese president in the Festival’s history. Wong Kar-Wai won the Best Director award in 1997 for the film Happy Together.

The festival has become an important showcase for European films. Jill Forbes and Sarah Street argue in European Cinema: An Introduction, that Cannes “became…extremely important for critical and commercial interests and for European attempts to sell films on the basis of their artistic quality” (page 20).[2] Forbes and Street also point out that, along with other festivals such as Venice and Berlin, Cannes offers an opportunity to determine a particular country’s image of its cinema and generally foster the notion that European cinema is “art” cinema.[2]

Additionally, given massive media exposure, the non-public festival is attended by many movie stars and is a popular venue for movie producers to launch their new films and attempt to sell their works to the distributors who come from all over the globe.

The most prestigious award given out at Cannes is the Palme d’Or (“Golden Palm”) for the best film. The jury of the festival, made of a small international selection of movie professionals, grants other awards, including the Grand Prix (“Grand Prize”) – the second most prestigious award.

– courtesy of Wikipedia.com

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