Cannes Film Festival
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Nadine Labaki, Caramel
WRITER-DIRECTOR-STAR NADINE LABAKI IN A SCENE FROM CARAMEL. COURTESY ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS. As role models, few filmmakers are more inspirational than Nadine Labaki. On top of the inherent difficulty of succeeding as a writer-director, Labaki grew up in Lebanon’s war-ravaged capital, Beirut, in a Middle Eastern culture where women are essentially second-class citizens. However, Labaki’s passion for film drove her to overcome her obstacles, and in 1998 her short film 11 Rue Pasteur (her graduating project at Beirut’s Saint-Joseph University) won the top prize at an Arabian film festival in Paris. Back in Lebanon, Labaki honed her craft as a director […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 1, 2008 -
Cannes ’07: Wong Kar-wai on My Blueberry Nights
It’s a rainy mid-day in late August — the wetness welcome, following an intolerably hot week, even by New York City summer standards. At night during that unpleasant spell the postmodern auteur Wong Kar-wai — the master of lush visuals and unpredictable soundtracks, the absolute perfectionist concerned with memory, loss, loneliness, and the subjectivity of time — had been shooting scenes downtown on the West Side of Manhattan, on SoHo’s funky Grand Street, for My Blueberry Nights, his first movie in English and the out-of-competition opening night presentation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (The Weinstein Company will release the […]
by Jason Guerrasio on May 15, 2007 -
CANNES LINEUP
The Cannes lineup is in a bunch of places: here’s the link to Indiewire’s piece. Quick take: Inarritu’s Babel, Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, new films by Bruno Dumont, Pedro Almodovar, Ken Loach and Aki Kaurismaki, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (which we have a tiny preview of in the new issue — more when it comes out), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s follow-up to Distant all in Competition. Andrea Arnold’s Red Road the sole first feature in Competition. (I’m wondering what happened to Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain — Variety reported that it would be the festival “somewhere” just […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2006 -
U.S. DISTRIBUTORS IN CANNES
Anne Thompson files a fairly exhaustive survey of the American companies and their business objectives going into the Cannes Film Festival and Market. And even if you’re not headed to the Croisette, it’s worth reading as a summary of the state of the indie distribution business. Among the topics Thompson covers are the potential business partners of the Weinstein Brothers, the road ahead for Bob Berney in his new HBO/New Line theatrical distribution outfit, and the strategies of the smaller companies like ThinkFilms and Roadside Attractions. She also comments on likely pick-ups. From the piece: “Distributors who saw advance screenings […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 10, 2005 -
The Cannes Film Festival 1994
The strapless celebutante, doused in an atomic shower of paparazzi flash, scales a palatial stairway with her impossible heels and perfect smile. At the summit, she joins her seventh husband, a vaunted master of European cinema sporting an ill-fitting tuxedo. He is fondly recalling an afternoon extolling the virtues of a since-denounced Communist film bureaucrat to an enraptured Van Nuys-based creator of erotic thrillers, himself bankrupted by the two watery cappuccinos just purchased from a surly waiter who undoubtedly will have better seats than any of them for tonight’s film. All four have great tans. An, hypocrisy, cash and glamour; […]
by Noah Cowan on Jun 15, 1994
