Founded in 1946, the Cannes International Film Festival is the dream of countless filmmakers.
Traditionally, the festival is held every May in the French seaside town of Cannes. On March 19, 2020, the Organizing Committee of the Cannes International Film Festival issued a statement that the 73rd Cannes International Film Festival, which was scheduled to be held from May 12 to May 23, was postponed in view of the global spread of the epidemic. Claire Denis, a 74-year-old French female director, said: "I have never experienced it without the Cannes Film Festival in May".
Stills from Family Album.
On June 3, 2020, the Cannes Film Festival finally officially announced the official list of 2020 finalists. The list consists of 56 films, no longer distinguished by a main competition, a kind of attention, a non-competition screening, a midnight screening, and a special screening, but is divided into seven parts, including: The Faithful, The Newcomers, Director's Collection Film, Feature Film Debut, Documentary, Comedy, and Animation. Thierry Frémaux, the festival's artistic director, said: "No one knows how the second half of the year will help us, whether it is possible to organize major film events again, including the Cannes Film Festival in 2020", but the Festival of Cannes decided to change the convention for this particular year.
Stills from "The Snake's Embrace".
For the Festival de Cannes, it's an innovation: the online film market launched by Jérôme Paillard, marketing director of the Festival de Cannes. Despite the unprecedented difficulties encountered this year, the festival does not want to give up, so it is announced that the launch of the film online market, aimed at supporting the international film industry and helping professionals, will be held from June 22 to June 26.
We have a deep respect for this move in Cannes. To this end, UCCA, together with DDDream and Station B, jointly planned and launched a cloud viewing event with the theme of "Cannes on the Cloud: Dream Journey", especially from June 24 to June 28, which is almost synchronized with the cannes film online market, through the "cloud" to screen 5 award-winning and shortlisted films from 4 units in Cannes, in the form of cloud viewing, to review the light and shadow of the previous Cannes Film Festival in an exceptional state.
Stills from "Ollie's Happiest Day".
This cloud viewing film will show 5 of the 4 units of the best - in addition to the well-known main competition unit and a kind of attention unit, the 4 units we have carefully selected also include the director's bi-weekly unit and the film critic week unit.
The main competition section is the most talked about section of the annual Festival de Cannes, as a number of grand prizes, including the Palme d'Or, are produced in this section, with about 20 films from around the world competing for the grand prize every year. In 1959, Taiwanese drama veteran Tian Chen's "Swinging Hair and the Holy Daughter" became the first Chinese film in history to officially compete for the Cannes Palme d'Or; in 1962, Li Hanxiang's "Yang Guifei" was shortlisted for the main competition unit, winning the Best Interior Photography Color Award for its palatial court set and costumes, becoming the first Chinese film to win an award in Cannes; the only Chinese film to win the Palme d'Or was Chen Kaige's Farewell to the Overlord, 17 years ago.
Stills from "Wandering Pandy".
A focus unit was created in 1978 and focuses on the works of international new filmmakers. Known for the film's unique aesthetic and novel and singular niche style, this single element is an important platform for independent authors and directors to gain attention and development, and since 1998, the "One Kind of Attention Award" has been awarded, and the award-winning works have been sponsored for release in France. Chinese films that have been shortlisted for one of the attention units include: Zhang Yuan's "East Palace and West Palace", Lou Ye's "Mystery of the Floating City", Jia Zhangke's "Legend of the Sea", Li Yang's "Blind Mountain", Guan Jinpeng's "Lan Yu", Diao Yinan's "Night Train", Dai Sijie's "Balzac and the Little Tailor", Wang Chao's "Fantasia", "Summer in Jiangcheng", Li Ruijun's "Passing the Future", Bi Gan's "The Last Night on Earth" and Zhao Deyin's "Burning Secret". Among them, Wang Chao's "Jiangcheng Summer" won this unit award.
Stills from "Deeper Than the Sea".
The Director's Bi-Weekly Unit, known as the Director's Professional Unit, was founded in 1968 by The French New Wave film master Truffaut to boycott the Cannes Film Festival, which was becoming increasingly commercialized at the time, and to cooperate with the famous French "May Storm" that year to force the closure of Cannes in 1968. After the renovation in 1969, Cannes embraced the "Directors' Fortnight", organized by the French Directors' Association, as one of the purest, most innovative and exploratory sections of the festival. In 2001, Wang Chao, director and producer of "Anyang Baby", was shortlisted, and in 2002, Wu Shixian's short film "Car Forty-Four" became the first Chinese short film selected for this unit.
Film Critics Week is a parallel section of the French Film Critics Association founded at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962 to elaborately present the feature film debut or second work of emerging directors from around the world. Many accomplished film masters, such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Ken Lodge, Jacques Odia, Arno Despritzin, Wong Kar-wai and so on, all started from this unit. As a result, Critics Week is considered the "first year" of the Cannes Film Festival, and many directors are selected for Critics Week for their short films and debuts, and then step by step to the main competition section.
The 5 masterpieces from these 4 units in this cloud viewing film are: "Deeper than the Sea" is from a kind of attention unit of the 69th Cannes Film Festival, which is a film about the director's "memory" of Kore-eda and Kore-eda - the story itself is fictional, but the characters and plot in it come from the director's memory, full of life philosophies in ordinary life; "Wandering Dipan" is from the 68th Cannes Film Festival Main Competition Unit award-winning film, telling the story of three ordinary Sri Lankans disguised as a family in order to seek asylum. And in Paris struggling to integrate into the new life, showing the theme of great social care; this film is contrary to the traditional sports competition biographical film for the portrayal of positive heroes, through the anti-logic setting to show a different sports film; "Snake's Embrace" from the 68th Cannes Film Festival Director's Bi-Weekly Unit, is a black and white video poem written by the young Colombian director Hiro Guilla to the South American continent, through two periods of time and space and the intertwining of two cultures, Embark on an Amazon jungle-like fantasy journey and dreamlike adventure; Family Photo Album, from the Critics Week section of the 68th Cannes Film Festival, chronicles a realistic and absurd family photo album of a couple that reveals the current state of Turkey's thought-provoking society.
This event invited 12 guests, 4 of whom are the directors of the cloud screening films, 3 of them will meet us in the form of VCR, and the director of "Deeper Than the Sea" is Kore-eda, who will parachute into the live broadcast room and dedicate his Chinese live broadcast debut to the audience; we will take the form of director VCR + live broadcast + bullet screen interaction, review the wonderful moments of the Cannes Film Festival in the cloud exchange with the live guests and hosts, and carry out a dream journey from the "cloud" with rich and diverse perspectives. To express the most sincere tribute to the Festival de Cannes.
The film copyright of this event is specially supported by DDDrem, and the live broadcast platform is specially provided by Station B, with special "cloud viewing" functions such as exclusive cinema halls, ticket inspection halls, real-time bullet screens, and live exchanges after the guest screening. You can walk on the clouds and experience the charm of Cannes images.
For more information, please pay attention to the official public account of the UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art.
The "fourth generation" director, screenwriter, producer, and professor of the Beijing Film Academy is the most dynamic and respected "post-40s" filmmaker who is still active in the film circle. His film representative works include "XiangNu Xiaoxiao", "Honmei Nian", "Fragrant Soul Girl", "Black Horse", "Yeshe Dolma" and so on. In 1978, he directed his first film "Fire Baby", thus officially starting his directing career. In 1987, he directed the feature film "Xiangnu Xiaoxiao" in a kind of attention section of the Cannes Film Festival and won the "Don Quixote" award at the 36th San Sebastian International Film Festival; in 1990, the feature film "The Year of The Life" won the Silver Bear Award at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival; in 1993, the feature film "Fragrant Soul Girl" won the Golden Bear Award at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival; in 1995, the feature film "Black Horse" directed by him. He won the Best Director Award at the 19th Montreal International Film Festival in Canada; in 2000, he directed the feature film Yeshe Dolma, which won the Special Award for Best Screenplay at the 20th Golden Rooster Awards for Chinese Cinema; in 2001, he was a member of the jury of the 51st Berlin International Film Festival; in 2008, he was a member of the jury of the 32nd Montreal International Film Festival; in 2010, he was a member of the jury of the 4th Asian Film Awards; and in 2014, he was the chairman of the jury of the 8th FIRST Youth Film Festival In 2012, he won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the China Film Directors Association, in 2015, he won the "Outstanding Teacher Award" of the International Federation of Film and Television Academies, and in 2019, he won the Lifetime Honorary Award of the 3rd Litchi International Film Festival.