By Cannes International Film Festival May 19, 2007, 4:19 GMT
Here is a rundown of some of the activities, screenings and information released by the Cannes International Film Festival on May 18th, Day 3 of the fest.
05/16/2007 - Judith Godreche - 2007 Cannes Film Festival - Day One - May 16, 2007 - Palais des Festival - Cannes, France © Pixplanete / Photorazzi
Gallery can be found to the right.
In competition: “Les Chansons D’amour (Love Songs)” by Christophe Honoré
After having presented his previous films in Cannes – 17 Fois Cécile Cassard (Seventeen Times Cecile Cassard - 2002) in Un Certain Regard and Dans Paris (Inside Paris - 2006) in the Directors’ Fortnight – French director Christophe Honoré is back on the Croisette, but this time in Competition, with a musical comedy featuring Louis Garrel – who already appeared in Ma Mère (My Mother) and Dans Paris – along with Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Clotilde Hesme and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet. Les Chansons d’Amour focuses on the tribulations of a triangle love story composed of Ismaël, Julie and Alice. The musical soundtrack bills thirteen original songs, performed by the actors and scored by Alex Beaupain.
Based on pre-existant material, Christophe Honoré declared: “There was no question of me making a parody of the genre. I simply approached it by saying: ‘This film is a musical because the characters can only express their feelings by singing.‘ The issue of the story was never raised in fact, only the idea of how to deal with it without becoming petrified, how to tell it and make it work in a musical structure that reflects on the whole film. The settings, such as the parent’s apartment return like a chorus, with a different tone according to what happened in the previous verse. And, as in a song where certain instruments return or vanish while others are added on, the secondary characters give fresh impetus to the story while others are ejected from it.”
Competition: “The Banishment” by Andrey Zvyagintsev
It has been four years since Andrey Zvyagintsev was honoured with the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival for his first film, The Return. His second film, The Banishment, screening in Competition brings the Russian director to Cannes for the first time. This drama was more or less adapted from the novel by William Saroyan, The Laughing Matter, which tells of how a birth can upset an entire family. The director chose to work with the same “father” as seen in The Return, Konstantin Lavronenko.
Questioned about the critical success of his first film, which received awards from around the world, and the pressure on him to produce as much in his second offering, The Banishment, the director related, “The syndrome of the second film is a myth that needs to be dispelled. Vindication can only come from your work, from the film, because the film itself is the goal and not a means of proving something.”
Out of Competition: “Boarding Gate” by Olivier Assayas
With the Out of Competition presentation of Boarding Gate, French director Olivier Assayas is back on the Croisette, a regular who has presented three others in the Cannes Festival Competition, Sentimental Destinies in 2000, Demonlover in 2002 and Clean in 2004. This latest film features an international cast – Asia Argento, Michael Madsen, Carl Loong Ng, Kelly Lin – in a thriller that follows the destiny of Sandra, a young Italian rebel who left Hong Kong after her lover died and then finds herself in a sordid game of manipulation.
Talking about how Boarding Gate came about, Olivier Assayas explained: “A news brief caught my eye about the murder of French financier Edouard Stern during an S&M session. It seemed right out of my film Demonlover. I also thought about a woman on the run, trying to escape both the murder and the past. I wanted the second part to be about her escape, her being desperate and on the move. I knew the first part could pretty much take place in any Western city. But the second part had to be in Hong Kong.”
The Poster of the 60th Cannes Festival
With the poster celebrating the 60th anniversary, the Cannes Festival looks resolutely to the future. According to Festival President Gilles Jacob, "Over a year ago, we began wondering how to celebrate our 60th anniversary. All of us shared the same desire to anticipate the future, by giving top priority to the films and their creators, to pay tribute to the lifeblood of cinema. The idea was to celebrate sixty years of creation with a creation." The idea was the brainchild of a 2006 meeting with the staff of the Magnum photo agency. The cult photos by American photographer Philippe Halsman – his famous series of jumps – would be "remade" to celebrate the landmark 60th anniversary in 2007, with the creation of a "new jumpology": the greatest choreography ever organized for celebrities of the film world.
At the 2006 Festival, a number of world-class artists, including Pedro Almodóvar, Juliette Binoche, Jane Campion, Souleymane Cissé, Penelope Cruz, Gérard Depardieu, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, and Wong Kar Wai agreed to "jump" for Magnum photographer Alex Majoli – a studio visit between their photo-call and their film press conference. This series of portraits, which eloquently expresses the pleasure of playing and creating, was then entrusted to graphic artist Christophe Renard, who composed them into an original collage, an ode to the creative energy of cinema. The bouquet of artists explodes like a fireworks display, making the poster the graphic manifesto of a Festival bound for the future.
Radiomad designers Frédéric Menant and Jean-Pierre Hadida contributed an original signing system made up of rainbow-colored letters as a guide for festival-goers exploring the world of this 60th event. The graphic identity they developed also appears in all the Festival's official publications, is echoed in the Palais decoration scheme, honoring the directors of the Selection, and "brands" the collection of Masterclasses in Cinema.
Competition: “Les Chansons d’Amour (Love Songs)” by Christophe Honoré
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