Avoiding the Red Carpet

Posted by Fetch Sat, 03 Jun 2006 01:05:00 GMT

Cannes is the granddaddy of all film festivals, and it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of everything. People long to fall under the alluring promise of walking the red-carpet. What they don’t tell you is how insane people become in order to obtain a ticket to a premiere at the Palais. The crowds start to collect outside the theater hours before the screening in order to glimpse a star. In French tradition, they push without any sense of order and expect you to move or be bull-dozed. If you do gain admittance, seeing a film in the Lumiere Theater is an amazing experience. The plush velvet seat cushions are the most comfortable seats in movie theater history, and the kind folks at the festival translate the film into multiple languages for worldwide viewing pleasure. Since these films will most likely get distribution in the United States, getting trampled just to enter this famous theater isn’t for the weary. It’s a little overwhelming, but it’s Cannes.

One of the more exciting opportunities of The Cannes Film Festival is stumbling into a screening without any prior knowledge of what you are about to see. With our badges, we were allowed access to all screenings outside of the Lumiere Theater. We were able to see all of the films entered in Un Certain Regard and the Directors’ Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs).

Certain Regard has become the largest category of the festival, and it screens films that are innovative in one way or another; films are entered by first time filmmakers, or seasoned filmmakers taking risks in their careers. Think Richard Linklater’s A Skanner Darkly, Rodrigo Garcia’s Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her, or Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother. Directors’ Fortnight, created by the French Director’s Guild in 1969, is another division of the festival. The included films highlight new directors in world cinema and directors who are still little-known in the West or in international festivals. In 1999, Sofia Coppola premiered her first film The Virgin Suicides at Directors’ Fortnight. This years highlights included: Jean Claude Brisseau’s The Exterminating Angels, M. Blash’s Lying, Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne and William Friedken’s Bug. How William Friedkin was included in this category is still a mystery to me.