Andrew Pulver, a film editor for the UK-based publication “The Guardian,” has finally had enough of the Cannes Film Festival. The 10 day…
Andrew Pulver, a film editor for the UK-based publication “The Guardian,” has finally had enough of the Cannes Film Festival.
The 10 day ego-fest will be celebrating its 71st anniversary this month, but the recent deluge of #MeToo allegations, and with Time’s Up overtaking each awards ceremony with more guilt and vigor than the previous, Pulver has begun to question the merit of a Cannes Film Festival.
In his recent article, “Cannes In Crisis: Has The Festival Learned The Lessons Of Weinstein?” Pulver suggests that Cannes Film Festivals are actually doing more harm to the entertainment industry than good.
He writes, in part:
The film festival is now, in effect, a crime scene. Weinstein was one of Cannes’ princes, a showman who used the festival as a personal fiefdom: buying and selling films, holding court to the press and public, and, it would now appear, using the festival as a private playground.
And although Pulver points out that Weinstein “vanished – practically overnight,” similar sentiments formerly held by Weinstein remain.
“Cannes itself is a two-week celebration of male brains and female beauty, as a walk down the Croisette in the evening will attest,” Kate Muir, a Time’s Up advocate said in Pulver’s piece. “Many wheelers, dealers and producers still parade with paid-for models or prostitutes on their arms, which makes female film-makers deeply uneasy about what, precisely, is valued by the money men.”
The problem with this, of course, is that many of these men – and Cannes itself – fein progressive interests in the name of popularity and relevance.
As Cannes prides itself on its progressive vision, providing a showcase for films from overlooked corners of the film industry (Poirier calls it “an Olympic Games of cinema”) this could well become the route to a compromise. The festival proudly announces its breakthroughs – this year, for the first time, a film from Kenya has made it to the Croisette – and it is easy to imagine Cannes and Netflix collaborating on some kind of outreach project, in areas with few if any cinemas.
As the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival approaches, it will be interesting to see whether high profile directors, actors, and the like address these issues head on or continue to hide behind their sunglasses and tinted windows, waiting for the storm to pass.
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