| Any film festival, but especially Cannes, is a voyage
of discovery. All we have at the start of this journey is the itinerary
as mapped out by Gilles Jacob and his festival team. An itinerary which
is complemented by a series of side trips offered by Pierre-Henri Deleau
and the Directors' Fortnight, a section which is celebrating its 30th anniversary
this year.
The written word of Jacob and Deleau has been enough to get the world's
leading film critics salivating at the possibility of a truly great festival.
It may be a year late in arriving for the festival's 50th anniversary celebrations,
but the wait – we all hope – will have been worth it.
While the mood for the festival is buoyant, the same cannot be said
for the market. Times are tough for independent film sales and most of
the sales companies are coming off a year of three consecutively bad markets
which started a year ago in Cannes. A factor blamed, at the time, on the
50th anniversary celebrations. Mifed and the AFM did not offer the comfort
of such excuses.
The feeling of those in the know is not of changing trends and the
normal cyclical nature of the business, but a re-definement of the very
core and nature of the independent film industry as we know it. Moving
Pictures will be looking at these changes and developments in the week
ahead.
Ironically, if the past 12 months – since the industry last met in
Cannes – have taught us anything, it is that the general public is more
eager than ever to go and see films and to pay to see them on a big screen.
The success ranges from the $1 billion in international box-office grosses
recorded by the unsinkable Titanic, to the global success of 'little' films
like Bean and The Full Monty. It includes a Japanese language film, Shall
We Dance?, grossing nearly $10 million in the US domestic market.
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