To the Jurors of the Cannes Film Festival
You will spend the next 11 days watching 22 films that the programmers and leaders of the Cannes Film Festival deemed to be the worthiest of this year’s competition.
The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most prestigious festivals in the world. Festival Films including last year’s Oscar winner The Artist have gone on to have long and successful lives, and filmmakers’ careers have been launched on the Croisette. As we all know, the opportunities to have your film seen on a world stage is invaluable.
For the 2012 edition, as with the 2010 edition, there are NO FEMALE DIRECTED FILMS in competition, and in the 64 years of the Festival only one woman — Jane Campion — has been awarded the Palme D’Or.
Festival director Thierry Fremaux responded to the recent manifesto from La Barbe – a French feminist action group – which decried the lack of women by saying:
“I select work on the basis of it actual qualities. We would never agree to select a film that doesn’t deserve it on the basis it was made by a woman…There is no doubt that greater space needs to be given to women within cinema. But it’s not at Cannes and in the month of May that this question needs to be raised, but rather all year and everywhere.”
We call for Cannes, and other film festivals worldwide to commit to transparency and equality in the selection process of these films. We judge films as human beings, shaped by our own perspectives and experiences. It is vital, therefore, that there be equality and diversity at the point of selection.
Mr. Fremaux is correct in stating that women’s rights must be addressed year round. We, the undersigned, encourage an industry-wide discussion about this issue, and call on the leaders throughout the industry to participate in and contribute to a dialogue about how we can, to quote Mr. Fremaux, “create a greater space for women within cinema.”
Sign the petition and see all the signatures.
https://www.change.org/petitions/cannes-film-festival-where-are-the-women-directors#
I have signed. Have you?
This June COLLABORATOR will have two special screenings here in New York City before its July theatrical release.
The first is June 18th at the IFC center, and the second is on June 19th at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.
Hal Hartley will be there to present on the 18th, and Martin Donovan and Ted Hope will be there to answer your questions on both nights.
June 18th
IFC Center
7pm
Buy tickets online.
June 19th
Museum of the Moving Image
Tickets onsale soon.
Find out more about Collaborator on Prescreen.
Collaborator premiered at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, winning several awards including best actor for David Morse.
Read director, writer, and star, Martin Donovan’s thoughts on creating Collaborator.
Check out Collaborator’s Facebook page, and find more information about the film and its upcoming release from Tribeca Film on VOD, iTunes, Amazon, VUDU on June 19th here.
And read about previous coverage of Collaborator on Hopeforfilm here, here, and
here
Not succeeding plays a hugely important role in the creative process. Join me and Ed Burns at the Vimeo Festival + Awards on June 8 (?) as we discuss the importance of embracing failure in creative work, with postcards from own personal dark days—jobs that went wrong, ideas that fizzled out, expectations decidedly unexceeded—and exploring how failing miserably is crucial to artistic achievement (and maybe even finding happiness).
More info here: http://vimeo.com/awards/festival/conversations#failure-ftw
The other panels look to be pretty f’n awesome, so you might want to check those out too.
Available nationwide on Cable VOD, iTunes, Amazon – June 19
Opening in select theaters – July 6
Robert Longfellow (Martin Donovan, THE OPPOSITE OF SEX, “Boss”, Weeds”) is a famous playwright who can’t seem to catch a break. His recent Broadway play was met with horrible reviews and an early cancellation, and his marriage is being tested as an old flame (Olivia Williams, THE GHOST WRITER, RUSHMORE) has reentered his life during a particular moment of weakness. Retreating back to his childhood home to visit his mother (Katherine Helmond, BRAZIL), Robert crosses paths with his childhood neighbor, Gus (David Morse, THE GREEN MILE, DANCER IN THE DARK, “Treme”). A right-wing, ex-con who still lives at home with his mother, Gus is Robert’s polar opposite in every possible way. When Gus holds Robert hostage at gunpoint during a drunken reunion gone terribly wrong, the drama unfolds as social status, celebrity and the imminent threat of violence converge, building up to a climax that will leave both men forever changed.
Ted Hope and acclaimed documentary director and producer Peter L Stein discuss what makes a project great in terms of artistic innovation and financial viability at the Disposable Film Festival, 2012.
2012 VIMEO FESTIVAL + AWARDS PROGRAM GATHERS THE GREATS TO EXPLORE WHAT’S NEXT FOR CREATIVE VIDEO
- Keynote Address: The End of the Beginning with Dr. Reginald Watts
- Failure FTW (For The Win)
- The Story Is Everything
- Director Profiles
- Building Your Audience
- The Art of Getting Paid
- The Future of Creative Careers; and many more.
This will be our 3rd Indie Night at Film Society Of Lincoln Center, and although I have been programming movies for you for close to three years now, I have not yet been able to bring you any sci-fi films. That changes with this offering, and, man, it's been worth the wait.
When first features work, as this one does, they can be remarkable displays, often representing what the director has long dreamed of expressing, free of the general self-censorship that market considerations bring. On their first feature, creators often feel a far greater pressure to demonstrate what their authorial voice represents; perhaps it is because of this pressure that it is hard to find true confidence and discipline on display in many early works. But, holy cow, that is that not the case with Jean-Baptiste Leonetti's CARRÉ BLANC (White Square) — yet a further proof of the colossal wave of international greatness that is defining cinema today.
Whereas America's corporately engineered cinema implicitly lusts for a dystopian future while it delivers pat excuses of psychological backstory (instead of character complexity), empty images full of flash (but devoid of real-world emotion, politics, ethics, or meaning), surface level editing (that removes any understanding of place), a willingness to introduce new narrative elements solely to advance the plot, & shock (for sensation not understanding), cinema worthy of the term art — like CARRÉ BLANC — does quite the opposite. If you are looking for an antidote to THE HUNGER GAMES or even want to see a true alternative, join us. Some people may call CARRÉ BLANC too tense or brooding, dark or bleak — but for me it is nothing short of exhilarating, heartfelt, electrifying. thoughtful, and fully capable of maintaining a sense of humor and fun in these dark times.
Leonetti's nameless and brutal totalitarian regime is far more scary than what we've been delivered as of late precisely because it seems like a future we not only could have had, but still might. CARRÉ BLANC is delivered in haunting precise images, sounds, and actions. Full of legitimate suspense, references and riffs, from Stanley Milgram's social science experiments to classic sic-fi cinema like SOYLENT GREEN & SILENT RUNNING, we are given a world that extends far beyond the narrative's confines, where constant threat of violence indicates the begging need for revolution — be it of the society and it's practices or that of the individual's heart and mind. At the heart of CARRÉ BLANC remains a love story, capturing both the trauma and shared mission that modern society needs to breed honest love and it does this with us, not in spite of us.
This is a world of cinema that I want more of: sci-fi for adults, expressing ideas while maintaining a discipline, love, and even sense of humor for composition, and an appreciative commitment to both restraint and excess — the ying/yang that makes each element truly sing. CARRÉ BLANC is a film that benefits from its financial limitations, enhancing its art with imagination, while remaining committed to cinema's core attributes of image, sound, & time (composition, juxtaposition, pace). It raises the bar for what we should demand from all cinema.
CARRÉ BLANC is the type of film that summons your memories of great works by the great directors, and it doesn't suffer for it. BRAZIL, 2001, SOLARIS, THX 1138. It made me giddy in the same way that Aronofsky's PI & Jone's MOON did, in that I knew a major new director arrived, and one that would take me to places I myself would never imagine, yet once arrived, would forever dream (not always pleasantly!) about.
Order tickets: www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/carre-blanc
If the following review doesn't make you order a ticket right now then you clearly are not the audience for the film: www.dailyfilmdose.com/2011/09/tiff-2011-carre-blabc.html
"George Orwell as filtered through Andrei Tarkovsky" — Todd Brown / Twitch.com
And more: smellslikescreenspirit.com/2011/09/carre-blanc-review/
Watch the trailer here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3X4YW50Ptk
And please come see the film Wednesday May 2nd at 8:00 PM at the Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Wed, May 2
8:00 PM
Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center
144 W. 65TH St
New York, NY 10023
Take a break and come join me, director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti, and some of his team at Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Indie Night”.
Most sincerely, and forever hopeful about film,
Ted
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