Postcards from Cannes
I arrived at the world’s most famous film festival just as Harrison Ford was due on the red carpet for the premier of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. La Croisette was packed with thousands of fans - a surprising number of them in leather fedoras - who’d been lining the streets for hours for a glimpse of the action hero.
The atmosphere was enough to shake off any lingering fatigue from the previous night’s ‘Moonwalk’ – a fantastic annual fundraiser for breast cancer research which starts at midnight and takes you all through central London.
My first stop was a reception to celebrate the London Film Festival. It’s a crucial event in the festival season, a great showcase for British talent and a true celebration of international film. Like Greg Dyke, I have real ambition to see the LFF grow into a first choice for filmmakers and industry, and also to see audiences continue to grow.
I twice had the thrill of walking up the red carpet, attending the world premieres of Gomorrah, a challenging Italian film dealing with the difficult issue of the mafia, and the altogether more light hearted ‘Two Lovers’, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix. There are few times in life when you really get a taste of the world of the glamorous and famous and this was an experience to savour.
But aside from the glamour, Cannes is a really busy film market with a lot of business being done. This festival is not just about the parties, extravagant though they may be. It’s about selling. It doesn’t matter if you’ve made the next Citizen Kane if nobody gets to see it, so this really is an opportunity for film makers to secure the best international distribution they can.
Spending time with sales agents, producers, directors and other industry representatives, there were some common themes being discussed. There is a real confidence across the film business that the UK truly has world class talent on either side of the camera. But at the same time there are concerns about the impact of piracy on the financial future of film. I hear time and again from creative businesses that copyright theft is a major threat, which is why we put fostering and protecting intellectual property at the heart of our strategy paper, Creative Britain. In meetings with film Ministers from the other European Union countries, it was clear that it’s an issue that’s exercising minds throughout Europe.
Breakfast with the team behind Better Things, a British film attracting a lot of favourable attention after appearing in the Critics’ Week competition at Cannes was enlightening. Director Duane Hopkins is making a name for himself now, but was frank with me about the tough road it takes to get there. I want to make things easier for new talent to break through, and was interested to hear the thoughts of this successful team on what more we might do to support new and independent film makers.
I also had the great pleasure of meeting Terence Davies, an original and distinguished British talent whose film Of time and the city drew admiration from all quarters. I will be sure to see it as soon as it reaches the UK. It is especially exciting that this successful project has come out of Liverpool’s tenure as Capital of Culture, which has proved itself to be a real catalyst for high quality creativity. Terence’s film impressed the international cinephiles in Cannes, just as the Klimpt exhibition has set pulses racing across the art world.