Cinema

As a beautiful way to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary, the Cannes Film Festival asked 35 directors from all over the world to make a three-minute film about a cinema that has inspired them. The result is Chacun son cinéma [To each his own cinema], a film compilation seen in its entirety by the artists at the same time as the public when it was screened at the Festival.

For its president, Gilles Jacob, the idea was to bring filmmakers together, but not just any filmmaker: "Those who have the merit - and it’s no easy thing - of contributing to the development of the cinema as an art form." Among those responding to the call were American Gus Van Sant, Englishman Ken Loach, Polish director Roman Polanski, Mexican Alexandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Chinese Wong Kar-Wai, New Zealander Jane Campion, Israeli Amos Gitaï, Egyptian Youssef Chahine, Iranian Abbas Kiarostami, as well as French director Olivier Assayas and photographer and documentary-maker Raymond Depardon, all prepared to celebrate collectively, in the words of Gilles Jacob "the place where the artistic spark is kindled when the lights go out and the film begins".

N.B. the Cannes Film Festival, in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of its promotion of the cinematography of the South, is devoting a day to screening African films, with the programme "All the cinemas of the world", and is organising meet-the-director sessions with 20 filmmakers from sub-Saharan Africa as well as a celebration of this continent, which is an important exponent of the art of film-making.

Stéphanie Secqueville
Journalist