The Cannes film festival!!!

Starting today, I am so excited!!




The above amateur film might not look like much, but this is the pre credit presentation before each film in Cannes... Memories... Well done to whoever managed to take that given how strict security had become over the years!

I have had a love affair with the Cannes film festival since 1992, when I skipped school to attend as I lived nearby in Nice.

I realised that attending screenings during the day was not all that hard when you're young and cheeky and was close to wetting myself when I managed to get in the screening of Twin Peak, the movie adaptation. I got expelled from school for a week after that, but in retrospect it was all worth it.

Over the years I managed to see more and more films and to get a pass, met an ageing singer that took me under her wings for a few years and got me into even more screenings.

So many good memories over the years, being among the first audience in the world to see Pulp Fiction in 94, bumping into Pedro Almodovar, John Waters, who was very amused by my request of an autograph, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver (looking very gloomy after the tough afternoon screening of a long Australian movie about the trials of a quadraplegic woman), Gary Oldman (who was my hero at the time in 93), trying to get in the Armageddon party with a very glamorous friend but armed with only one invitation (we lost the second one was our feeble excuse, it worked, Bruce Willis had already gone though), and meeting that American journalist (sorry, Talent Executive) on that same night...

I loved discovering films before reading anything about them and make your own opinion... The last film I ever saw on my last year there in 1998 was Colazon Illuminado, an Argentinian film by Hector Babenco about a mystical love story. It was probably one of the best thing I have ever seen, yet this film never came out in any country... I loved the way every film is given the same chance by the festival, on the same day, you can have the screening of the latest US blockbuster as well as some obscure black and white Hungarian movie and they are both treated the same way.

Thinking about all the obscure films I saw on a massive screen thanks to Cannes I would never have seen otherwise, The Baby of Macon, Three lives and only one death, N'oublie pas que tu vas mourir...

It was hard work and tiring, I would sometimes see 4 films a day back to back, run from one place to another to get invitations and get to the screening, having to queue for hours, the excitment the buzz and the madness were palpable.

This year selection is looking promising, it is harder to follow from the UK as no one is really bothered about it but will certainly be keeping a close eye on it.

Starting today is My blueberry nights, the first English speaking film by Wong Kar Wai with Norah Jones, Jude Law, Natalie Portman... The critics are tradtionally ferocious with the film on the opening night, but it sounds intriguing.

I like the Jury as well, Stephen Frears as president, and among others, Toni Collette (who owes Cannes big time after the all the buzz Muriel's wedding got back in 1994 thanks to its Cannes screening), Sarah Polley, Maggie Cheung, Maria de Medeiros... Sounds like a dream casting to me.

No pictures sadly, my time in Cannes was before the internet, and all the pictures, autographs etc... are long gone and lost, my memories though are as vivid as ever!