Anniversary Film: “To Each His Own Cinema”

The most beautiful birthday gift that the 60th Anniversary Cannes Festival event could have received is this collective film entitled To Each His Own Cinema. It will premiere at
the Théâtre Lumière at 7pm, after the 60th Anniversary Ceremonies. Commissioned by the Festival, this unusual film piece was directed by 35 renowned cineastes, including: Theo
Angelopoulos (Trois Minutes), Olivier Assayas (Recrudescence), Billie August (The Last Dating Show), Jane Campion (The Lady
Bug), Chen Kaige (Zhanxiou Village), Michael Cimino (No Translation Needed), Joel and Ethan Coen (World Cinema), David Cronenberg
(At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Dans l’Obscurité), Manoel De Oliveira
(Rencontre Unique), Raymond Depardon (Cinéma d’Eté), Atom Egoyan (Artaud Double Bill), Amos Gitai (Le Dibbouk de
Haifa), Hou Hsiao Hsien (The Electric Princess House), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Anna), Aki Kaurismäki (La
Fonderie), Abbas Kiarostami (Where is my Romeo?), Takeshi Kitano (One Fine Day), Andrei Konchalovsky (Dans le Noir), Claude Lelouch
(Cinéma de Boulevard), Ken Loach (Happy Ending), Nanni Moretti (Diaro di uno Spettatore), Roman Polanski (Cinéma
Erotique), Raoul Ruiz (Le Don), Walter Salles (A 8 944 km de Cannes), Elia Suleiman (Irtebak), Tsai Ming-Liang (It’s a
Dream), Gus Van Sant (First Kiss), Lars Von Trier (Occupations), Wim Wenders (War in Peace), Wong Kar Wai (I Travelled 9,000 km
to Give it to You), and Zhang Yimou (En Regardant le Film).

Each director was totally free to make his own three-minute film on the theme of the movie theatre, a place sacred to the world’s film buffs. “The title of the full-length feature was
inspired by the variety of cultures, backgrounds, and talents. Thirty-three individual works combine for a collective celebration. This unique composition is not merely a mechanical series of
views of movie theatres. Instead, it creates an ever-changing vista of unlikely encounters in an astonishing variety of theatres. None of the directors knew anything about the others’
fragments, not even their synopsis. They agreed to discover them along with the festival-goers, at the evening dedicated to celebrating the Festival’s anniversary,” declared Gilles Jacob,
President of the Festival, who launched the idea. As a prelude to the evening’s festivities in honor of the directors, Canadian artist Robert Carsen, recently noted for his staging of
Bernstein’s Candide in Paris at the Théâtre du Châtelet, has designed an introduction to the collective film To Each His Own Cinema.

Saturday evening, many of the filmmakers were together at one of Cannes’ best hotels, as the dinner guests of Gilles Jacob. At this time, Mr. Jacob gave each of the directors a medallion
commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Festival.

Photo Copyright AFP