PARIS ON $25 A DAY
The Cannes Film Festival's Residency Program
Le Résidence du Festival de Cannes.
TURN AWAY FROM THE SEX SHOPS in Pigalle, Paris’ latest neighborhood-in- transition, head down the hill and you’ll come to Cité Malesherbes, the private gated street that is home to La Résidence, France’s latest contribution to world cinema.
La Résidence, or, more formerly, La Résidence du Festival de Cannes, consists of a large second-floor apartment complete with its own private screening room fashionably furnished with the latest in European modernica. Off a long central hallway are six bedrooms, each equipped with top-of-the-line stereos, TVs and, on the shelves, video libraries consisting of tapes of every Palme d’Or winner. And in the bedrooms? Six young directors from all over the world chosen to take part in the Cannes Film Festival’s first-ever residency program.
An outgrowth of the Cinefondation — created by Cannes president Gilles Jacob in 1988 as a Cannes Festival selection category for short films originating from film schools — La Résidence offers its filmmakers not only the peace and quiet to write their first feature screenplays but also an immersion in all things French: museum and opera tickets, French lessons, weekly classes in the history of French cinema, and prearranged meetings with top French producers including Paulo Branco, Haut et Court’s Carole Scotta and Caroline Benjo, and ARP’s Michelle Halberstadt. And if all the Francophilia seems just a bit much, the filmmakers are given a bracing dose of cultural imperialism in the form of American screenplay guru Robert McKee, who arrives in Paris to teach his celebrated course.
With its tony environs and "to be young and in Paris" theme, one might be tempted to dub La Résidence the "Real World" of film philanthropy. However, a visit to the joint on a sleepy Sunday afternoon in November dispels the thought of any MTV-ish hijinks. Helsinki-born Hanna Miettinen is in her room writing, Philadelphia-born NYU grad Caran Hartsfield is walking out the door to shop for CDs, and fellow NYU grad Pete Sollett (one of Filmmaker’s "25 New Faces" of 2000) has one eye on America’s ongoing election saga via CNN ("It’s so embarrassing," he decries) and the other on eBay, where he’s bidding on an Arri 2C auctioned by Brazilian filmmaker Alejandro Saderman. (Sollett didn’t wind up with it.)
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| Le Résidence du Festival de Cannes. |
Of her fellow filmmakers, says Hartsfield — whose short Kiss It up to God took second prize at the Cinefondation screenings in Cannes this past May: "We barely see one another except when passing through the kitchen for breakfast. And we don’t talk much to each other about our scripts, although it’s early in the program and maybe that will change." Sollett, whose Five Feet High and Rising scored first prize at Cannes, echoes her thoughts: "Nobody is slacking off here. This is the furthest thing from college." And Miettinen adds, "I’ve lost sense of the days. At home I have weekends off, but not here." In addition to Hartsfield, Sollett and Miettinen, the first group of filmmakers to move into La Résidence for the residency program includes Hungary’s Marcell Ivany and the U.K.’s Rachel Tillotson and Emily Young. The six were chosen from 50 applicants, with nine semifinalists being flown to France for an interview with director and selection jury chairman Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep), who remains available as an advisor throughout the program.
Despite the elegant Parisian setting, all of the filmmakers I spoke to have had no problem keeping the subject matter of their scripts close at hand. For Sollett, whose feature screenplay takes off from Five Feet High and Rising, which was set among teenagers in New York City’s Lower East Side, inspiration can be found right outside the window. "There’s a high school across the way, and I watch the kids. Through the window I can’t hear them talk, so it’s like a silent movie; you watch their body language and it’s the same as kids everywhere." Says Miettinen, "My script is a comedy set in Finland about a woman who makes a bad decision. Staying here in Paris makes me see the relationships in my movie more clearly. That’s what comedy is about, after all — distance."
With its trips to various European film conferences, its meetings with French producers and visits from folks like McKee, the residency is also something of a crash course in the differences between American and European film production. Comments Miettinen, "In Europe, the script is a piece of art you can’t change. But in the States, it’s just a tool. If you have a story about a red ball, the Americans will ask, ‘Why is it red, and why this particular ball?’ But [in Europe] nobody questions it; you just have your reasons."
The first group of filmmakers continue through January 2001. Cinefondation has announced the next six filmmakers who will pass through La Résidence, a list that includes American Laurie Collyer (Nuyorican Dream) and Japan’s Ken Yunome, a New York-resident whose debut film, Island Alicia, played Cannes Directors’ Fortnight a few years ago. The other four are: Yvona Siekierzynska (Poland), Maximiliano Lemcke Gonzalez (Spain), Ilgon Song (Korea) and Djamshed Usmonov (Tadjikistan). – Scott Macaulay
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