Cannes Film Festival celebrated its 60th anniversary

Cannes, France, May 21 (UNI) Cannes Film Festival formally celebrated its 60th anniversary through a series of gala events yesterday.

There was the screening of the new film, specially commissioned for the occasion, with a red-carpet welcome to the galaxy of directors, chosen from across the world to make the film.

A press conference was organised for the World Media, present in this famous beach-resort for covering the fest, to meet those directors. In the evening, a formal, Anniversary dinner was hosted by Gilles Jacob, President of the Cannes Festival for the distinguished invitees, which was followed by fireworks.

''To Each his Own Cinema'' was the title given to the film that was specially commissioned by the Festival to celebrate its 60th anniversary.

It was premiered yesterday at the Grand Theatre Lumiere, the main venue. Prior to the screening, the directors of the Film present on the occasion were together accorded the special Red Carpet welcome.

The Film had been the idea of Gilles Jacob, who had selected 35 renowned film-makers from the various continents to come together for the purpose. They were given the common theme of Movie-Hall, ''a place sacred to the film-buffs''. Each was requested to make just a three minute short on that theme, independent of each other, hence the title. These shorts were then joined together to compile the film.

The directors chosen were those whose films had already been shown at Cannes in the past years. Many of them had won the coveted Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the festival. Over 30 of the 35 directors so chosen were present at the screening of the film yesterday.

Asia's representation came mostly from Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar Wai from China. However, no director from India was included in the list, not even from the NRI-trio of Mira Nair, Gurinder Chadha and Deepa Mehta. In fact, there was just a single woman director in the list -Jane Campion - who commented on that fact during the press conference.

It was an interesting session when these renowned directors met and interacted with the World Media, in a press conference held in the Festival complex yesterday.

Many of the directors agreed that it took quite an effort and energy to make just a three-minute short. Using a Boxing terminology, one of them said while they could win on points, in a short-film one needed to score a knock-out! The Press-meet ended on a sour note when director Roman Polanski staged a walk-out, protesting against the ''empty questions'' which were being put to the Panel on the dais by the Media. He said the latter should be "ashamed" of doing so and that they did not ''love Cinema''. The conference was hastily brought to an end shortly after that incident. It did appear to be an opportunity not fully availed of, looking at some of the questions put by a few media-persons present at the Meet, to what was a unique gathering of so many of the 'greats' of the contemporary cinema.

Bonhomie and a sense of the occasion were the hallmark of the Gala Dinner given the same evening by Gilles Jacob for select invitees. All the directors of the anniversary film were individually honoured through a special 60th anniversary momento, given during the dinner.

The celebrations were brought to a close by a brilliant display of fireworks over the Cannes Bay. It was done by the company which had organised a similar display at the Athens Olympics three years back.

UNI