Cannes Report - Sunday, May 26
JE RENTRE CHEZ MOI
BY JOHN HARKNESS
PRIZES
The main jury prizes will be announced at 1 pm EST. They should be available here shortly thereafter. If you don’t mind waiting, Bravo! in Canada will be broadcasting the awards ceremony at 8 pm. American Bravo, which has no actual connection with Canadian Bravo!, will run the ceremonies at 7 pm.
FIPRESCI (the jury of the International Film Critics Association) prizes:
Competition – Divine Intervention, directed by Elia Suleiman (Palestine);
Un Certain Regard – Herekamono (Waiting For Happiness), directed by Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania);
Director’s Fortnight – The Clay Bird, directed by Tareque Masud (Bangladesh)
The FIPRESCI jury managed to pick films from three countries that have never before had a film in any official section of the festival.
Ecumenical Jury:
The Man Without A Past, directed by Aki Kaurismäki (Finland);
Honourable mentions to The Son, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and A Mother’s Smile, directed by Marco Bellocchio
Prix d’Un Certain Regard:
Blissfully Yours, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand)
WINDING DOWN
Back when I started coming to Cannes, the Market tended to run for the whole festival; there were years when the first Market screenings preceded the opening-night films and when one could find Market people on the final day. Of course, when I started coming to Cannes I had to file stories by teletype, and don’t think that wasn’t fun.
Yesterday afternoon, roaming back to catch the announcement of the FIPRESCI prizes at a pavilion in the “international village” of tents (various national film industry pavilions), I cut through the bottom of the Palais and out through the Riviera, the Palais annex that houses the Market. It looked as if a tornado had been through the place. The Market folks had just gone, having left behind little but some discarded posters that provided proof, despite all evidence to the contrary, that people like Jeff Fahey and Rae-Dawn Chong still get cast in movies – not movies anybody sees, of course, but that’s never stopped anyone before.
Back in the old days (we’re talking about the late 80s now), it was kind of fun to watch them dismantle the Market. It took a couple of days. Either the breakdown crew has got far more efficient (as this is France, I’m not putting money on that option) or the Market is thinner now and people just get out of Dodge a lot faster.
The Market, of course, is an old-tech convention. "If we want people to see our film, we need to pack up our office, bring five or six people halfway around the world, rent space in the basement of a large, ugly building and, most important, transport heavy cans of film and rent a theatre in which to screen them." You don’t need to do any of those things now, but “the entertainment business is a people business,” so the fact that the biggest video distributor in Bhutan knows your face will lead him to snap up that Jeff Fahey cop thriller you’re peddling the rights to.
Send a tape. Which, after 11 days of hauling myself up and down the hill to and from the Palais, is pretty much how I feel about the whole thing.
DVD NEWS
The Festival de Cannes has announced the Collection DVD Festival De Cannes, a set of 10 DVD titles that means the distributors can put a sticker on the boxes. The titles are Almost Famous, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Cleopatra, Amélie, In The Mood For Love, Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs trilogy, Moulin Rouge, Requiem For a Dream, The Usual Suspects and The Complete Jean Vigo.
The Jean Vigo set comprises films that predate Cannes, though A Propos De Nice certainly has a Riviera connection; there was a scandal last year when the festival declined to include Amélie in the Selection; and Almost Famous, of course, premiered in Toronto and never played at Cannes. Does the glory reflect on the films because of their association with Cannes, or on the festival by its association with these films?
Speaking of DVDs, if you think it’s expensive to buy DVDs in Toronto, may I recommend coming to France and checking the prices at FNAC? Basic DVD prices are around 25-30 euros, which, given an exchange rate of $3 Canadian to 2 euros, means $39 Canadian for American Pie 2. While checking prices at FNAC, I noticed that Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 4 is out already. We in North America get Season 2 in a couple of weeks, C’mon, Fox, what’s the hold-up? (They’ve also got the first two seasons of Angel and the first four of Friends.)
OBLIGATORY QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Are we having fun yet?”
– Zippy the Pinhead
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