Thierry Frémaux speaks about Cannes

Cannes turned 60th this year, and Thierry Frémaux, the Festival's Artistic Director, came to the BFI last night and speak about the festival.

A lot of the questions were quite predictable - Is Cannes becoming more commercial, selecting more Hollywood films and less "auteur" films?  Has Cannes been taken over by the paparazzi, starlets and red carpets and lost sight of its core belief?  Frémaux answered succinctly and intelligently.  He said one thing that I can't agree with him more, is that there are no Hollywood or auteur films, commercial or not commercial, genre or no genre, for him, there are only good or bad films.  And that's why "Shrek" was selected for Cannes a couple of years ago.  Be it a super commercial animated film or not, in the end, it's also a good film. 

What Cannes does that I admire and am an advocate for, is that it looks at "cinema" as a culture, as an art, and more importantly, as a whole.  Therefore, it supports the small "auteur" and "art" films and yet remains open to the big budget films (granted sometimes things do get political and it has its failures in picking some not so good films in the past, like "The DaVinci Code"...)

One thing he said that I loved, cinema is an experience.  Everyone is so excited sitting in the theater, they can't wait for the lights to dim and the curtain to open, they clap and scream before and after the screenings, and then they leave the theater arguing and discussing the film to death, that is magic.

For me, that sums up everything about cinema.   It's that magic that units us all as human beings.  For two hours, we're gathered in a room, despite our different background (racial/cultural/financial...,) to experience a world that the filmmaker has created.  We laugh, we cry, and most importantly, we feel.  And it is exactly because of this unique human experience, that I think it's so important that ALL films have their place in the market, big or small, pure entertaining or pure intellectual.  Because we humans have millions of emotions, there are days that I want to watch "Dude, Where is My Car?" but there are days that I just want to watch Tsiang Ming Liang's "Goodbye Dragon Inn" or Sokurov's "Russian Ark."

If the industry only supports one kind of films (solely blinded and based on the outcome of the box office,) then it is no difference than robbing our experience as human and controlling how we ought to feel.  I hope most film industries (especially HK) will learn from Cannes, open their arms, welcome and support not just the big budget entertaining films, but also the smaller "auteur" films.  So that one day we can go into a multiplex, watch a "boring" art film and argue to death with our friends what it actually means, and then go into the next theater and make up with our friends laughing our asses off watching "Scary Movie sequel 10th"

How's that for a desperate plead on a Wednesday afternoon?