Today the Cannes Film
Festival comes to an end. There have been so many film stars and well-known
directors who have attended the festival this year either to present their film
or as guests that I´ve decided to post this collage made with the posters of
the films which have taken part in the official competition so that you can do
your own research and discover the story that hides behind every poster.
One of the first
films which were premiered was Money Monster
and even if this film wasn´t part of the official competition, it managed to
hog the limelight thanks to its famous director and its star-studded cast. Jodie
Foster is the film-maker of this film which aspires to be a denunciation of
the greed of Wall Street and, at the same time, it pays attention to the sort
of TV programmes that we watch these days.
Another image that
caught our attention was the one of Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon who were reunited after 25 years
for an award – the Women in Motion Award – obviously if you are not too young
or you are really a film buff, you must know that these actresses were the
protagonists of the groundbreaking film Thelma and Louise.
Films are made with
images, evidently there are more ingredients that are part of a film and I´ve
written about this aspect on some occasions: there are words and there is music
but the origin of cinema is linked to the power of moving images and that´s
why, the organisers of the Cannes Film Festival are so careful and so thoughtful
when it comes to choosing the official poster for the festival. This year, they
have also decided on an iconic image even if this may be less familiar to those
who are not into films, and this is the reason why they have chosen such a
symbolic image: “The official poster for the 69th
Festival de Cannes was designed using stills from Jean-Luc Godard´s film Contempt. It's all there. The steps, the sea, the horizon: a
man's ascent towards his dream, in a warm Mediterranean light that turns to
gold. As an image it is reminiscent of a timeless quote used at the beginning
of Contempt: "Cinema
replaces our gaze with a world in harmony with our desires”.
I have borrowed the explanation from the festival´s official website and
I think that I had to it because this image is so reminiscent of the cinematic
world that it is really powerful but at the same time, it is so full of
symbolism that it may be difficult to understand for quite a lot of people. To
put it in a nutshell, by choosing the
still of a film that is about making a film – a film that had such an impact on the history of
cinema – the poster tells us about the
world of cinema par excellence.
What do you think about this
year´s official poster for the 69th “Festival de Cannes”? I´ve
commented on the posters from the previous editions in the blog, if you compare
this year´s poster with the others, which one is your favourite one? Do you
feel that this year´s choice was the right one? Why do you feel so?
