A largely joyful occasion, the press conference on April 12th to present the official selection for the 71st Cannes Film Festival was nevertheless not entirely without gravity, and notably the ire expressed by the president and the director of the world’s foremost cinema festival over the taking of selfies on the red-carpeted steps of the venue.
The idea of a ban on taking selfies during the star-studded ascension was already raised in 2015, and among the numerous arguments advanced were the delays such behaviour caused to the protocol of the festival, and the unfortunate incidents of people stumbling and tripping over. While the move to curb selfies had no effect then, festival president Pierre Lescure and its director Thierry Frémaux decided to have another go this year, with the pronouncement of a formal ban.
Quite how the ‘no selfie’ rule will be enforced was not explained. Denouncing what they described as “disrespectful” behaviour, which for them was at odds with the spirit of elegance that should prevail at the ceremony, the two men detailed that the ban applied to members of the public, while the attendant “artists” would be free to snap themselves as they please.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
During the press conference, other issues were raised, such as the failure of talks between the festival organisers and Netflix whose films are prohibited from competing in the festival because they are not released in traditional cinema theatres. It’s not a minor subject, for it involves the temporalities and instances through which cinema is made accessible. The poor representation of films from certain geographical regions was also raised, as was the decidedly too few films by women directors which are selected to take part. What is at stake here, too, is far from trivial.
Meanwhile, Frémaux tried, unconvincingly, to explain that the modifications to the calendar of screenings, which result in the press no longer being the first to discover films, was not a move against the profession. Then, of course, he could not avoid offering at least a few comments on the scandal surrounding Harvey Weinstein, the US producer whose triumphs and escapades were for a long time Hollywoodian, but also Cannes-ian. The scandal is so vast it has had repercussions well beyond the world of cinema, dominating public debate over the past six months and, in all probability, will continue to do so until the year’s end.
While the other matters raised at the press conference were anything but minor, none were given such grave attention as that regarding selfies. The unbalance here is comical, and it is above all tempting to read into this a sign typical of the manner in which the Cannes festival considers its own importance, as well as its relationship with the latest developments in cinema in particular, and images in general.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Everyone has of course the freedom to consider selfies as a phenomenon that is “ugly”, the adjective aimed as much at the gesture, considered to be unpleasant, as the pictures obtained, their quality supposedly unworthy. But one would be hard put to deny that selfies are among those practices that are the most representative of the mutations that today affect images. Without going so far as to wish that films made with a selfie stick are selected at the festival, would it be placing the bar too high (or too low) to suggest that a festival like that in Cannes should be among the first in line to be concerned by such mutations?
Furthermore, there is not in fact here an outright ban on selfies, but a decision to limit the right to take them, which is reserved for the “artists”. The aberration of this is so flagrant that I cannot tell whether it is above all a joke, a slip of the mind, or a piece of nonsense. Before the question of whether they are attractive or ugly, selfies constitute simply the crudest – but not the least interesting – manifestation of the process of ‘amatarisation’ of image-making that has been seen since the beginning of the new millennium. Which makes banning the practice by amateurs and confiding it to professionals a rather sinister muddling of lines (at best, and in the interest of remaining polite).
Some may consider me to be excessive. It could be said that because each festival is a ceremony (or what the late French film critic André Bazin called an “order”), a good dose of ingeniousness is required to mix what is played out on the steps of the Palais des festivals and what is shown within. Some might say that the festival organisers’ dread of selfies has hardly prevented the selection of films that reflect the latest advances of digital techniques – from personal diaries, the hybrid mix of fiction and documentary, to miniscule works or, on the contrary, others that are monumental, made in the solitude of a room or in the middle of the still-smoking ruins of an empire.
It might be added that, far from ignoring the major changes happening on the sidelines of cinema, the festival last year screened several episodes of Twin Peaks and of Top of the Lake. It will be noted that this year it will show the eight hours that Wang Bing dedicates, with his film Dead Souls, to the survivors of the “anti-rightist” crackdown in China 60 years ago. Perhaps it would even be reminded that Frémaux and Lescure are the masters of their own place – which, after all, is an argument.
In short, if it can be recognised that the episode of selfie-taking that marked the April press conference was curious, and even significant, it can be said that in itself it would struggle to fulfil the aim of this article, which is to present the reasons why Mediapart, for the third year running, will not be travelling to Cannes this week. So here follows the detailed reasoning of our position.
Thierry Frémaux believes he has no one to answer to
The possible objections, as just mentioned, to the criticism here fail to recognise an essential element. A festival does not consist simply of, on the one hand, a certain decorum, and on the other a certain number of screenings. It is not a simple presentation of a selection of films around which unfold festivities in a purely frivolous relationship. A festival should place the presence of cinema within a universe that is larger than cinema alone. In this manner, it is anything but a showcase, but rather it provides an opening of windows.
A festival is a test, an experience. Not exactly life-size, even in the case of Cannes, and for this reason it is all the more precious. What sort of dialogue does cinema establish with the elements in its vicinity, including, and perhaps above all, with what, while no longer having the shape of a film, continues to belong to it in whatever manner. What is the process of entering and leaving a cinema theatre? What cannot not link cinema with the exterior? Through what words and which events, which backdrops and which horizons does the vision of a film need to be prolonged?
Festivals are not the only occasions when these issues are raised. Wherever there is cinema, the question of what links it to those things outside it is present. But festivals exist so that, from time to time, these questions are reviewed, in order that, at a given place at a given time, they take on a visibility and shape that they cannot have elsewhere.
It is therefore important to take note to what degree, at every festival and at Cannes above anywhere else, at stake is the interest and the beauty of films and, more still, the capacity to bring into sense a certain idea of cinema. Otherwise put, this is the capacity to question oneself about the significant changes which, while affecting the existence of cinema, ceaselessly renew the forms which mean that this existence is never so autonomous that it can stand as something aesthetically and socially apart.
Little by little, a truth has emerged which is now almost blindingly obvious; the Cannes Film Festival does not consider itself to be concerned by these questions. Dozens of films of all categories are shown there every year, which is regarded as the justification for being present. Any doubt about that is not allowed. All the film-reviewing media know that of the movies they will be writing or talking about over the coming 12 months, around two thirds will have first been discovered in Cannes, which is clearly considerable.
It is one thing to underline the precellence that Cannes maintains in its agenda of awaited films, as also with those that were not expected and which are discovered with all the more pleasure (not forgetting those, no less numerous, which one would happily have passed by). But it is another thing to realise that, festival after festival, the idea of cinema that surrounds their presentation appears ever more inadequate. For it is impossible that the projected films do not suffer from the discrepancy between what they are or venture to be and the surroundings within which they are shown.
The Cannes festival’s ideas about cinema are nowhere to be found in text. There is no need, it suffices to listen to its director for them to become clear. If the attack on selfie-taking was so striking, it is also because Thierry Frémaux adopts a tone in which gravity has no place. He cultivates a casual style, an informality that is always at home.
So much so that the man does not dislike giving an impression of unpreparedness. Every year during his press conferences he manages to mispronounce the name of a film director or a film title. In the same manner, he likes to pause during the presentation of the festival agenda to recount an anecdote, which can include something about the Lyon football team of which he is an ardent supporter. Also each year, he employs irony on the subject of never-ending questions he is asked, notably those justifiably concerning the under representation of women filmmakers.
But this relaxed appearance is not because the festival’s director takes his prerogative lightly. On the contrary, he has too high a consideration of it to reply to questions in any other than a cavalier manner. It is manifest that Thierry Frémaux believes he has no one to answer to. His style differs to that, which was smoother, of his predecessor, Gilles Jacob, but the succession has proved nothing other than a generational relay. In his public exercise of power, Jacob displayed an aristocratic reserve that Frémaux does not; against Jacob’s loftiness, Frémaux adopts a pally approach but which should not be regarded as a sign that has stepped down from his pedestal. His relaxed manner is rather that of a man who has no doubt that he occupies a post that is the envy of everyone. Frémaux is not cool, he is simply free of any complexes. If he is tackled, however mildly, his casualness can rapidly turn into haughtiness.
Cannes is not a particularly pleasant or welcoming place
Enlargement : Illustration 4
To anyone who might doubt this, it suffices, if I dare say so, to read the 624 pages of his book Sélection officielle, published in France early last year. Presented in the form of a diary, Thierry Frémaux details his friendships with stars of cinema, his travels and his passions, not without regularly hitting out at his critics and highlighting the grandeur of the Cannes film Festival, which he describes as the “most unique event in the world”. The book has the merit of being generous in its contents – what he himself, citing the late author Blaise Cendrars, describes as “lavish”. But it above all serves to promote a vision of cinema that is damningly conformist, dominated by a fascination for instituted glories to the detriment of those that are fledgling, saying nothing about all those menial, obscure filmmakers who would not deserve to be referred to by their first name.
Should one be scandalised because the director of the Cannes Film Festival has a high-society perception of cinema and goes about the official selections as he might in choosing a dinner table seating plan? Undoubtedly not. But should one find it logical that Frémaux, while having a particular vision of cinema, believes he serves cinema in general, unhesitatingly presenting himself as the defender of a “good cause”? That is less certain. Sélection officielle should be read – or flipped through – to better understand why the Cannes festival each year resembles a relic, increasingly ostentatious and preposterous, of an idea of cinema in which anachronism is hardly the least of its characteristics.
Yet over the past 20-odd years, there has emerged, almost everywhere, a reinvention of the types of festivals and their aims, principally due to the irruption of digital means and the increasing difficulty for supposedly ‘difficult’ films to make their way to cinema screens. Numerous events have opened production laboratories and posted part of their programmes online. They and others, such as South by Southwest, held in Austin, Texas, give accredited attendees Wi-Fi codes, priority place in certain cafés, organise shuttle buses between hotels and screening rooms. As for the Berlin festival Berlinale, several initiatives have been taken to facilitate migrants wishing to join in screenings.
Few other happenings are currently as interesting to follow as those. Only Cannes seems to pay no attention to them, as if, by whatever superstition, the management of the festival is convinced that it can only maintain its place at the top of the pile by changing its habits as little as possible. The town of Cannes is certainly not a particularly pleasant or welcoming place, but all the same! The duration of a human life has passed since the event first appeared and nothing has yet been undertaken to develop, however little, the comfort of the festivals. Over 12 days, the Croisette coastal strip and the rue d’Antibes are invaded by shoving hordes, the restaurants are expensive and the food is poor – and that is about it.
When the online press began to establish its influence, Frémaux contented himself with simply attacking the supposed dictatorship of comments posted on Twitter before a film’s ending credits had begun to roll. Most people would agree that as a reaction that came up short. In sum, the largest festival in the world maintains with that same world a most impermeable, and poorest, relationship. Is that sufficient to explain why Mediapart now chooses not to cover it? It seems to me that it does.
That said, one must have no sense of ridicule to believe that this choice contains an ounce of protest, or even – let us fear nothing – that it should be interpreted as a call for a boycott. This choice is guided only by a concern for coherence. If it is true that one attends a film festival to put to the test the place of cinema in the world, it is only reasonable to choose not to attend when the first among such festivals decides not to make this test its own.
I dare to hope that I will be believed when I say that there is close to no intention here of causing a controversy. I do not doubt in fact that the vast majority of journalists making the journey to the Côte d’Azur agree with the essential part of this diagnosis. But travelling to Cannes is habitual and represents a precious gain in time.
It is hardly more complicated than that at heart. Whoever would state that at Cannes they feel less in contact with what is happening today in cinema in particular and to images in general than if they were in the anonymity of a cinema multiplex, or watching a DVD in their living room, or streamed episodes of a series on their computer, would be inevitably be regarded as an agitator. Or a birdbrain. Or as an enemy of the art. However, they would in fact be simply stating the banal.
-------------------------
- The original French version of this article can be found here.