The Cannes Film Festival invited eight male directors for an hour-long symposium on the future of cinema on Tuesday — a session that raised uncomfortable questions for those working with streaming services, and paid no heed to the few female filmmakers on the panel.
Moderated by Cannes Festival Director Thierry Frémaux, Canal + Correspondent and Festival Associate Didier Alloch, guests included Guillermo del Toro, Claude Loch, Costa Gavras, Gaspar Noé, Paolo Sorrentino, Nadav Lapid, Matthew Kassovitz and Robin Campello. The directors were interviewed individually, with del Toro on stage the entire time.
The session – which lasted for two and a half hours, with speakers remaining anonymous until the event started – is one of two forums about cinema organized by the festival. A second discussion will take place on Wednesday afternoon local time.
When asked before diverse Whether or not female directors will attend the second event, Cannes confirmed this but did not reveal anything else. The next session will likely focus entirely on female filmmakers, although if so, it is unclear why the festival fired its directors in the first place. (Cannes has a record, albeit slim, for the number of women in competition this year: five out of 21 films directed by women.)
Del Toro began the conversation by saying that this film, as a cultural phenomenon, “has changed in terms of the importance and place it occupies in culture.” The Nightmare Alley captain said the future will present itself “regardless of whether we want it or not.”
“We cannot perpetuate the past and seek to preserve it, because it will not last as it was,” he said. “We are exactly at the same moment that cinema found itself with the advent of sound. We found it to be more than just a delivery system – it is the relationship with the audience that changes.”
Del Toro revealed two of his most hated words, which he called “malicious” and need to be discussed.
“There are two kinds of language that entered our lexicon about five or six years ago and are horrific: ‘content’ and ‘pipeline’, which are used to describe oil, water or sewage,” he quipped. “Whatever it is, they do not describe art and cinema, because they speak of impermanence, which is something we go through, and we have to keep moving. And in my world, the beautiful work of audio-visual storytelling must take its place next to a novel or a painting.”
However, “content” and “pipeline” are words closely related to streaming services, with which del Toro has also collaborated. The director’s next project, the Stop-Motion animated movie “Pinocchio,” has been funded by Netflix, and will premiere later this year.
“There are two sides to the equation,” del Toro said. One is the narration for the audience, the other is the possibility of making the film. I’ve been carrying Pinocchio for 15 years.
When I announced it, everyone said, ‘Take it so! Come and take a meeting,’ and I say, ‘It’s ‘Pinocchio’ during a lifetime [Italian dictator Benito Mussolini]And they say, “Oh, thank you.” They validated my position and outside of it [I] Go. And I finally got funding in one meeting with Netflix. So there are certain things that get done. The truth is, are they being seen, and how? “
Later, when Fremaux pressed him about working with Netflix despite trying to maintain the cinema experience, del Toro said it was “too easy to garner a letter like that.”
“My first duty is to tell stories,” he said. “If anyone can prove to me that the production system before was more perfect, open, and free – damn it, try it, for you will lose. It is a false argument. The first duty of a director is to make money, and if it is a pension or money for a relative, then you to do that.
“It’s very important to realize that it’s no longer just one streaming device – Disney Plus, HBO Max, it’s a phenomenon.”
Italian director Sorrentino was also in a hot seat when discussing his debut film in Venice for 2021, “The Hand of God,” which earned Netflix a nomination for Best International Feature Film.
“The movie I made for Netflix, it was a movie that had other needs, and in my opinion, it was good for Netflix, but it’s not something I mean for movies to come out again,” Sorrentino said somewhat ambiguously.
He later added, “I never see live streamers investing in the first films of a filmmaker and I think they should, because the platform is a place where you can experiment. That’s my experience when I look at the platforms; I’ve never found that.”
The death of physical media
The main concern of some committee members was the lack of film catalogs on signage, particularly with the declining attractiveness and availability of physical media.
“Speaking to a broadcaster, I would demand that they have a stronger catalog of films from other decades and countries,” del Toro said. “What if the next great movie came in 2023 from a broadcaster and we didn’t see it?”
Gaspar Noé, director of “Vortex” and “Love,” also echoed the call for live streamers to pick up more catalogs, because physical media is a “fading world.”
Noe warned that “this world will no longer be available”. “You’ll just have the platforms and they decide if the image is good and it’s for the audience.”
Greek-French director Costa Gavras, who won an Academy Award for the 1982 political thriller “Missing,” has been upbeat about cinema’s prospects as the industry emerges from the worst of the pandemic.
“I think cinema is starting to reach the end of a cycle, which is the case before COVID because it’s all said and done,” he said. “The cycle is over… COVID has closed the cycle. Everything will be different and will change from what it was before COVID.”
But it is not only cinema that has changed. So did the spectators, said the 89-year-old captain.
“I think the new generation is completely different and we are all different now. We are dealing with cinema in a different way after COVID. We need to listen and tell stories… Humans cannot live without stories; so cinema will continue. Not in the form we know, but it will.”
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