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Fifteen years passed, I made my first visit to the Cannes Film Festival and spent two intense weeks nourishing myself from cinema. It was a chaotic party dominated by burnout and attempts to stay awake and consume as many videos as possible. After a dizzying excursion through projections of everything from “4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days” to “No Country For Old Men” and “Secret Sunshine,” I struggled to treat the outdoor world in the dark, crowded rooms. And I couldn’t wait to pass again.
Back home, my euphoria gave way to frustration and envy. Cannes rolls out the red carpet to authors and treats cinema as a wonderful art; even in New York, videos seemed to be a much smaller component of the cultural equation. What’s going on? The answer, of course, comes down to money. It is useful to have a government with large resources invested in the arts, as France does, and Cannes reflects the equation of its country’s cinema as a civic duty. The result is a nationwide effort to save videos that have more impact than anything Hollywood does.
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I’m not the only one who notices the contrast. On this year’s red carpet, an official festival reporter asked Andie MacDowell what he liked about Cannes. to explore art and cinema.
This does not mean that the investment is guaranteed. The timing of the festival’s programming fell at a delicate time this year with the French presidential election, which thankfully ended with Emmanuel Macron’s re-election and not his terrifying far-right opponent Marine Le Pen. (During her campaign, Le Pen said she would prioritize the preservation of French national heritage sites over other cultural initiatives. )The electoral drama in France is not over: on June 12, the country will hold its general elections in which it will decide which of the country’s political parties will have the maximum power. Historically, the country’s new president-elect has a tendency to win. However, the world knows that such confrontations deserve not to be taken for granted; if Macron loses, his party’s cultural priorities may also suffer.
The president appointed his new culture minister last week and Cannes was his first mission. I was a few rows away from Rima Abdul-Malos angelesk at the Théâtre de los Angeles Croisette when the artistic director of the Directors’ Fortnight highlighted her in the audience as she settled in for “The Dam,” a Sudanese film through Paris-based Lebanese artist Ali Cherri. Abdul-Malos angelesk in the past worked as a cultural attaché in New York and was an adviser to Macron in his first term; At 43, he brings a new life to his practice and the prospect of boosting his investment in film. It will also be guilty of opting for a new leader for the CNC, the public investment framework that brings in millions of dollars. euros each year to film projects and contributes part of the Cannes budget.
If Le Pen’s party were to take over parliament next month, it would be much harder for Macron to prioritize cultural projects on his own terms, Cannes added. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the festival would lose resources without delay, but it’s a reminder that this enviable ecosystem remains fragile in its own country. And if you care about movies, you need Cannes, and ordinary French film culture, to thrive. The consequences of the festival are felt all over the world. It does not necessarily have the strength to galvanize the art and essay market, however, it generates enough noise and force around the concept of cinema that many of the countries they offer feel compelled to bring home to some extent this attitude.
It’s completely imaginable that “Top Gun: Maverick” would perform well in cinema without its noisy Cannes premiere, but Tom Cruise’s arrival at the festival showed a transparent solidarity with his investment in the perspective of films for the big screen. Paramount spends a lot of money on marketing, but that’s nothing compared to the harsh paintings made with French taxpayers’ money. Arte France presented 33 projects at the festival this year and set up many long-term projects outside the market. I almost feel the money floating from the yachts to the dock.
These budgets move to much bolder projects than tying Tom Cruise to a jet. They come with Lea Mysius’ ordinary biracial time mystery “The Five Devils” with Albert Serra’s dreamlike rumination on colonialism, “Pacifiction” and “Forever Young,” a poignant look at the ’80s theater company directed by Patrice Chéreau. The diversity of cinema that France supports is like Cannes itself: it advocates the survival of the art form.
I marvel at this kind of investment every year. When I spoke to a prominent French actor at an event a few nights ago, he laughed and said it looked like I wanted to move there. (He, the cinephile of the equivalent of “If you love him so much, why don’t you marry him?”) I don’t; I need to see some measure of the infrastructure involved in supporting films brought to my own country, as unlikely as it is.
America has so many heartbreaking disorders that complaining about a lack of art might seem frivolous to some. But storytelling, of course, can replace the world, or at least illuminate it. imperative with lasting price for society.
However, Hollywood treats videos and television under the guise of the dreaded C-word, which has no position in Cannes. You know, just like Martin Scorsese, who puts him on the level every time he passes the microphone. devalued through content,” he wrote in an essay for Harper’s magazine last year, denouncing the use of the word as “an advertising term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl ad, a superhero sequel, an episode of a series. This homogenization “has created a scenario in which everything is presented to the viewer on an equal footing,” he added, “which is democratic, but it is not. “
There is no point in dreaming of an ideal world in which the National Endowment for the Arts suddenly produces films in the United States. Earlier this year, the French government announced an investment of 1. 3 billion euros in French production; the AcSB edited them all. Hollywood studies its own projects for other reasons.
What the United States wants is greater personal investment in the global film ecosystem itself. Companies exploring their next big moves, from BRON to A24, may need to start thinking beyond individual subsidies and production resources.
Companies with the ability to spend a lot want to close the sustainable skills gap. They may only take into account some of the existing market failures, some of which I’ve covered in recent months, adding the lack of first-sight offerings for emerging filmmakers and the lack of reliable money for the regional festival circuit.
Art houses (and Art House Convergence, for that matter) want a pipeline to help the only ambitious exhibition left in the country. They want broad infrastructure responses rather than fragmented investments. It’s much more than throwing money away; Businesses that really want videos want to think in terms of strict metric responses that do more than make them feel good.
If you can’t move forward on this front, well, at least we have Cannes. For now.
Do you have any ideas for larger economic aid systems that can only help film culture in the United States, or bring more empowerment to Cannes across the Atlantic?Give me your ideas and I’ll pick up the phone to see how viable they are in a long-term column: eric@indiewire. com
Speaking of which: One conclusion from this year’s Cannes is that my story about the terrible scenario facing the programmer career has motivated other people in this domain and is in a position to see more progress. More main points next week.
Explore the columns here.
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