3, 2, 1 ....Action
For the next week or so the cinema world is focused on the 78th Cannes Film Festival (13-24 May), and the tapis rouge (red carpet) on which a string of stars parade as they celebrate the “seventh art.” This year's Festival de Cannes features a characteristically diverse lineup of films and events, with French actress Juliette Binoche serving as the jury president for the main competition.
The French are among the world’s most prolific filmmakers, with France typically producing close to 350 feature-length films per year. Certainly, when one lives in Paris it’s an almost weekly occurrence to be diverted around streets that are blocked for film crews.
The festival opened with the French comedy film Leave One Day by Amélie Bonnin. The Palme d’Or, which translates to the Golden Palm, is the highest award given at the Cannes Film Festival.
The French are among the world’s most prolific filmmakers, with France typically producing close to 350 feature-length films per year. Certainly, when one lives in Paris it’s an almost weekly occurrence to be diverted around streets that are blocked for film crews.
The festival opened with the French comedy film Leave One Day by Amélie Bonnin. The Palme d’Or, which translates to the Golden Palm, is the highest award given at the Cannes Film Festival.
Oh – and why do the French refer to cinema as the seventh art? Initially coined in 1911 by Paris-based “film theoretician” Ricciotto Canudo, it describes his belief that film combines all the six arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry and dance into a new, seventh art.