France’s Cannes Film Festival says it has finally snagged Steven Spielberg to serve as president of the award jury.
Gilles Jacob, the festival’s president, recounted how he had been trying to get the award-winning director to head the jury for years — but the American was always working. Finally, this year, Spielberg got in touch.
“When this year I was told ‘E.T., phone home,’ I understood and immediately replied: ‘At last!'” Jacob said in a statement posted on the festival’s website Thursday.
Spielberg, who was nominated but didn’t win the directing Oscar for his biopic “Lincoln” this week, takes the reins from Italian Nanni Moretti. The 66th Cannes festival takes place in the glamorous French Mediterranean resort from May 15 to 26.
Spielberg’s presence will likely give more of an American flavor this year to the Cannes festival, a m๏ฟฝlange of intellectual international cinema and Hollywood glamour. Jury presidents in the festival’s seven-decade history have included such figures as Tennessee Williams, Ingrid Bergman, Roman Polanski and Francis Ford Coppola.
Spielberg has had several films show at Cannes, and “E.T.” had its world premiere there in 1982. His first film, “Sugarland Express,” won best screenplay at Cannes in 1974.
“It is an honor and a privilege to preside over the jury of a festival that proves, again and again, that cinema is the language of the world,” Spielberg was quoted as saying in a statement by the Cannes festival organizers. “The most prestigious of its kind, the festival has always established the motion picture as a cross cultural and generational medium.”
At last year’s Cannes festival, Michael Haneke won the top prize with his stark film about love and death, “Amour.”
Does “Hundreds of Beavers” Reflect A New Path Forward In Cinema?
Hard as it may be to believe, changing the future of cinema was not on Mike Cheslik's mind when he was making "Hundreds of Beavers." Cheslik was in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with a crew of four, sometimes six, standing in snow and making his friend, Ryland Tews, fall down funny.
"When we were shooting, I kept thinking: It would be so stupid if this got mythologized," says Cheslik.
And yet, "Hundreds of Beavers" has accrued the stuff of, if not quite myth, then certainly lo-fi legend. Cheslik's film, made for just $150,000 and self-distributed in theaters, has managed to gnaw its way into a movie culture largely dominated by big-budget sequels.
"Hundreds of Beavers" is a wordless black-and-white bonanza of slapstick antics about a stranded 19th century applejack salesman (Tews) at war with a bevy of beavers, all of whom are played by actors in mascot costumes.
No one would call "Hundreds of Beavers" expensive looking, but it's far more inventive than much of what Hollywood produces. With some 1,500 effects shots Cheslik slaved over on his home computer, he crafted something like the human version of Donald Duck's snowball fight, and a low-budget heir to the waning tradition of Buster Keaton and "Naked Gun."
At a time when independent filmmaking is more challenged than ever, "Hundreds of Beavers" has, maybe, suggested a new path forward, albeit a particularly beaver-festooned path.
After no major distributor stepped forward, the filmmakers opted to launch the movie themselves, beginning with carnivalesque roadshow screenings. Since opening in January, "Hundreds of Beavers" has played in at least one theater every week of the year, though never more than 33 at once. (Blockbusters typically play in around 4,000 locations.)... Read More