67th Festival de Cannes Official Selection

Have to share that I really enjoy Thierry Fremaux humor and well, his work that is all about the movies! Press conference was amusing to say the least while learning the films in the competition was emotional when many of my wish list films made the selection; still, there were several pleasant surprises. Perhaps is only me but I feel there are too many American films and not enough French films (lol).

Yes there are some great films that are not in the selection and already there are a few controversies but let's enjoy today the selection, what organizers chose for this edition afterwards maybe will share the not so pleasant news.

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67th Festival de Cannes Short Films and Cinéfondation Selection

While the Official Selection of feature films for the 2014 festival edition will be revealed tomorrow, the list of short films in both sections is unveiled one day in advance. I'm doing this post for info purposes only as of tomorrow will publish in one post all films in the Official Selection.

Short Films Competition

This year the Selection Committee received 3, 450 short films from 128 countries and for the first time an Azeri and a Georgian film will take part in the competition.

Nine films will compete in 2014 for the Short Film Palm d'Or, to be awarded by Abbas Kiarostami, President of the Jury, at the Awards Ceremony of the 67th Festival de Cannes on Saturday, May 24th.

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67th Festival de Cannes News

I was waiting for fest organizers to unveil poster to share all the fest available news before next Thursday when the Official Selection will be announced but poster was so stunning that gave a post just to talk about it. So here are the fest news up to today.

Main Selection

This year the festival jury has a woman as president and is none other than Jane Campion that has a long history with the festival, starting by being the ONLY female director to have won the Palme d'Or for The Piano in 1993, being the unique double of also wining the Short Film Palme d'Or for Peel in 1986, to last year winning the Carrosse d'Or given by La Société des réalisateurs de films and was The Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury President. Her Cannes story continues with having her first feature film, Sweetie, screened in Competion as well as her film Bright Star and being part of great collective adventure of To Each His Own Cinema.

Thierry Frémaux says: “We are immensely proud that Jane Campion has accepted our invitation. Following on from Michèle Morgan, Jeanne Moreau, Françoise Sagan, Isabelle Adjani, Liv Ullmann and Isabelle Huppert in 2009, she is the latest distinguished name to grace a prestigious roster of female Presidents. Coming from a country and indeed a continent where film is a rare but powerful phenomenon, she is one of those directors who perfectly embody the idea that you can make films as an artist and yet still appeal to a worldwide public. And we are confident that her exacting approach will be mirrored by her Jury.”

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67th Festival de Cannes Poster

There are many news about the festival but the most important is that in two days, next Thursday, the selection will be announced and the Cannes yearly event will start full force as many, including me, are speculating that this year the selection will have "great" movies.

Today the festival poster was released to my great pleasure as yes I love iconic Marcello Mastroianni and most of all one of my most admired movies is none other than 8 1/2 by master filmmaker Federico Fellini. The poster is a beauty to my eyes that shows us Marcello in one of his particular looks to camera in Fellini's 8 1/2.

What follows is the story of how the poster came to life.

Hervé Chigioni and his graphic designer Gilles Frappier have based the poster design for the 67th Festival de Cannes on a photogram taken from Federico Fellini’s 8½, which was presented in the Official Selection in 1963.

In Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini, we celebrate a cinema that is free and open to the world, acknowledging once again the artistic importance of Italian and European cinema through one of its most stellar figures.

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2014 German Film Awards Nominations

Recently the Deutsche Filmakademie (German Film Academy) announced the nominees for the Deutscher Filmpreis (German Film Awards) -better known as Lolas- and the visually stunning western Das finstere Tal (The Dark Valley) by Andreas Prochaska plus starring none other than Sam Riley is this year's front-runner with nine nominations, including one for best picture.

With six nominations another period drama Die andere Heimat - Chronik einer Sehnsucht (Heimat: Home from Home – Chronicle of a Vision), a black and white film directed by Edgar Reitz. The surprise is to find nominated for best picture the German box office #1 film, the comedy by Bora Dagtekin; seems the academy is warming to commercial movies. Sigh.

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2014 Cinéfondation News - Update

Update with the 2014 Livre of Projects at post bottom. Enjoy!

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4/2/14
Created in 1998 and devoted to the search for new talent, the Cinéfondation selects fifteen to twenty short and medium-length films each year from film schools all over the world. The Cinéfondation selection forms part of the Official Selection and the selected films are presented to the Cinéfondation and Shorts Jury which awards a prize to the best three at an official ceremony.

As we know the Cinéfondation and Shorts Jury President is none other than Abbas Kiarostami supported by directors Noémie Lvovsky (France), Daniela Thomas (Brazil), Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Chad), and Joachim Trier(Norway). I expect the selection to be announced as part of the official selection.

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8th Asian Film Award Winners

A few days back the Asian Film Awards Academy had their award ceremony and the big winner is none other than the Grandmaster by extraordinary filmmaker Won Kar-wai by collecting seven awards including best picture, best director, best actress and more.

Really regret that excellent actor Tony Leung (still consider him THE best actor in the world) didn't got an honor BUT do not mind that Irfan Khan received the award as he gave us a great performance in The Lunchbox.

Winners are in *BLUE. If you wish to learn winners in all categories please go official site here.

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22nd L'Acid News

While we have to wait until Tuesday, April 22 to learn the ACID selection with the nine (9) films that will get promotion at Cannes thanks to the join effort of CNC and SACD, we can take a look at the independent section of the festival poster.

The poster was designed by Natalia Olbinski, student at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD). Find poster perhaps too graphically traditional and due to the nature of the association activities poster should be a lot more with modern graphic design. Sigh.

For your information ACID is an association of film directors which, for 21 years, has been promoting the cinema distribution of independent films and encouraging debates between the authors and the audiences. The strength of ACID is its founding principle : the support given by filmmakers to other filmmakers, French or international.

ACID has had its own programme at the Cannes International Film Festival since 1993. It screens nine feature films, fiction and documentary, chosen by ACID filmmakers among hundreds of works from all around the world. ACID filmmakers follow their love for a film and wish to give visibility to directors whose work is scarcely distributed, in order to facilitate a theatrical release.

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53rd Semaine de la Critique News

For its 53rd edition, La Semaine de la Critique unveils its new poster, which captures the creative energy of a whole new generation of filmmakers.

Conceived by the digital agency “Les bons faiseurs“, the poster features Kate Moran, one of the stars of Rencontres d’après minuit (You and the Night), the first feature of Yann Gonzalez, discovered at La Semaine de la Critique. Posing for photographer Jean-Claude Moireau, the actress sits astride a motorbike, looking like she's ready to conquer new horizons.

Find the poster graphically very interesting and most of all, modern which is quite unusual for Cannes posters. Bravo! Let's hope the festival also surprise us with a modern and interesting poster.

The Grand Prize of this 53rd edition of the Semaine de la Critique will be presided over by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold. The Jury, made up of four international journalists, will award one of the seven feature films in competition. The winning entry will follow Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza's Salvo, winner of 2013's Grand Prize.

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46th Quinzaine des Réalisateurs News

Created by the Société des réalisateurs de films (French Directors Guild) in May 1969 to aid filmmakers and contribute to their discovery by the critics and audiences alike, this parallel section of the Cannes Festival surely will surprise us this year with their selection that surely will be announced after the fest selection is announced in April 17. But while we wait lets check what the section has been doing.

Recently the Directors' Fortnight unveiled their poster and according to Edouard Waintrop there are two diametrically opposed ways to consider the poster created by Michel Welfringer, based on a photograph by Cécile Burban.

"Either we are watching a spectator making good his escape by way of the screen...a clean getaway...Or else this man is slipping into a shadow world as it represented in a certain cinema of 2014, serie noire... if the word hadn't already been patented. We will be showing both kinds this year and you will decide which you prefer. In any case, as this poster suggests, the films we are showing will usher you into a filmic dimension which, we hope, continues to be bigger than life…"

For me the poster looks more like someone trying to get into cinema from an unconventional way, forcing himself inside or without paying (its dues?). Sigh.

Soon the Carrosse d'Or winner will be announced and some of you will recall that last year the award went to Jane Campion that this year is the Festival Main Competition Jury President.

The Cannes parallel section this year will run from May 15 to 25.