The film industry has relocated to the French Riviera pretty much every year since 1946. Cinema has changed dramatically over those decades but Cannes provides some constants.
It has always been an incredible carnival, bringing together directors from around the world to parade pictures as diverse as American mega-blockbusters, British kitchen sink dramas, Bollywood musicals and Iranian indie gems.
But it’s the business side of the event where the real chaos is to be located. James Toback, a film director whose documentary Seduced & Abandoned is required viewing for anyone brave/foolish enough to lead an assault on Cannes, puts it best when he says, “You can spend your entire year looking for money and not find enough cash to buy a cup of coffee, but then you can go to the Riviera and tie up everything on the financing front in three days flat. Since everyone – and I really do mean ‘everyone’ –
is in Cannes, it’s the best place to do business.”
Toback’s not wrong about the throng Cannes attracts. The biggest stars, the hottest directors, the wealthiest money men – it’s the ideal place to pick up a cast, a crew and cash, lots of cash. It’s also the perfect location to sell a picture: the event at times resembles a second-hand car show, with producers desperately trying to palm off their dodgy straight-to-video wares to wary distributors.
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