More Premieres and the Virtual Reality / Immersive Competition

I saw 27 movies in Cannes, plus 6 of the programs/installations in the Virtual Reality / Immersive competition (more on that at the end of this post).

I saw a lot I loved or liked, a few that disappointed and one or two I loathed.

Three films enthralled/excited me so much I want to shout it from the roof tops:

Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”

Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez”

Sean Baker’s “Anora”

So I’m pleased to see “Anora” win the Grand Palme and “Emilia Perez” awarded with the Jury Prize plus a Best Actress prize for all four of its female leads.

The Cannes festival screens countless films – not just the official selections in and out of competition that get premiered in the Grand Lumiére – but many more that screen through “Un Certain Regard” or the Director’s Fortnight or other rubrics, not to mention many more being screened by or for sales and distribution companies in the marché du film. It is far more than any one person can keep full tabs on.

If you have the proper accreditation, you can have access to the on-line ticket sales, which make tickets for screenings available four days earlier at 7am sharp. So every morning at 7am it is a mad on-line dash to get tickets for something, anything, four days into the festival; and then the next morning you do it again.

Movies screen at the Grand Lumiére as well as several other screening venues in the Palais, and also several theaters on the Croisette and in the main town as well as in the outskirts of Cannes; like the Cineum, a twenty minute bus ride to the West. Four screening venues, including the very fine Imax, were used there for repeat screenings of festival titles. Above is a pic of me sitting in the Cineum Imax. Right before I saw the stunning “Girl with the Needle”. That is a film one best knows nothing about before seeing it to not spoil any of the surprises. Just be forewarned it goes to some very dark places…

Below a video of the trippy hallway into and out of the Cineum Imax.

The roof garden of the Cineum.

Back near the Palais, tarp hiding some road construction is festooned with large photographs of stars of yore during their Cannes festivals.

I couldn’t help but do a goofy selfie series with some of those celebrities.

I’d tried two versions with Grace. I think you’ll agree the one above is better than this alternative:

Here are some more pics of the marché du film – the film market.

This is me in the Palais cafeteria, blissed out after seeing “Emelia Perez”.

I made a friend in the Fantastic Film pavilion…

Of all the famous hand prints displayed just outside the Palais, I couldn’t resist this particular temptation…

Some views from inside the Palais’s upper floors, above the marché.

I got onto the Journalists Terrace on top of the Palais, only finding out afterwards that only journalists are allowed there. But that’s the only place you can get these views, so I think you will be glad I got away with a little rule breaking.

The much smaller terrace on the other side, the east side of the Palais, is available for the regular festival badge holder. And offers these views:

Here I am in the Theatre of the Croisette.

As part of the Director’s Fortnight, the Quinzaine des Cinéastes, I attended the premiere of the Chilean film “The Hyperboreans”, a dreamlike agitprop of a movie.

Here are the two directors Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña introducing their film with the two lead actors Antonia Giesen and Francisco Visceral. The directors themselves appear in the film too, but as puppets. It is a very idiosyncratic movie, unlike anything else you will have seen.

Here is the same foursome after the premiere screening basking in the applause.

Also saw several premieres at the Miramar, also along the Croisette.

This first was the premiere of the only French film selected for the Semaine de la Critique, another one of the festivals within the festivals at Cannes: La Pampa (English Title: Block Pass).

Cast and crew of “La Pampa” on stage before the screening.

Holding the microphone is drirector/co-writer Antoine Chevrollier, beside him the two young leads Sayyid El Alami and Amaury Foucher.

The director was emotional introducing the film, but they all got even more so during the rapturous post screening applause.

In the film La Pampa is the name of a dirt bike racing track. As a publicity stunt after the screening the young leads were driven around the block on two such bikes.

Another premiere at the Miramar: “Baby”, from Brazil, directed and co-written by Marcelo Caetano, holding the mic, with the two leads João Pedro Mariano and Ricardo Teodoro beside him. Ricardo Teodoro would go on to win the Critic’s Weak Rising Star Award.

Marcelo Caetano and João Pedro Mariano.

This is inside the Olympia, a cinema in the middle of Cannes, a very short walk from the Palais, where many of the catch-up screenings were held. Those were screenings you did not reserve tickets for ahead of time, but had to just show up (with the acceptable badge) and get on line before the screening. That is how I managed to see many of the films for which the on-line ticketing proved too elusive for me.

The Théâtre Claude Debussey is the second largest theatre in the Palais, almost as massive as the Grand Lumiére.

So what’s that above? Am I in a sci-fi thriller?

No, that is me wearing a Virtual Reality helmet, experiencing one of the pieces in the Immersive Competition. Various staging areas in and next to the Cineum housed 8 competiton installations plus at least a half dozen more “helmet only” Virtual Reality programs, most lasting 30-40 minutes. I sampled about 6 of them.

The above display is from “Human Violins”. An immersive piece about holocaust victims taking their violins with them into the concentration camps.

This is me trying to master some of the trickier aspects of VR technology,
where one’s one hand movements interactively affect elements of the virtual
world one has entered. The interactive elements included “making
musical sounds “playing a violin” along with the original soundtrack
(the harmonies were pre-arranged to always fit the music, but when to play and how long or short a sound to make was up to you)

As one wears the helmet, one can explore the world the artists created in
360 degrees just by turning one’s head. Each immersive program had a  completely different aesthetic. Human Violins conjured up a stylized recreation of the ghetto and Auschwitz, as well as dreamlike visualizations of musical sounds.
Human figures were rendered like three dimensional swirly pencil renderings.

Human Violins was naturally very moving. It’s hard to brush away a tear
while wearing a VR helmet…

It’s also easier to take selfies while just wearing earphones at the listening station one was brought to after experiencing the VR animation. Here true accounts of surviving holocaust violins and their owners were played.

“Spheres” played out of competition simply as a VR experience and not part of a larger installation. It was fantastic to experience stylized three dimensional renderings of the solar system, or the Big Bang or black holes and feel like you were traveling inside these phenomena. At one interactive portion one could “tap” the planets to send them on their orbits around the sun.

Below are people experiencing one or another of the six out of competition pieces, moving their heads to follow the story as it travels around them…

… or physically interacting within the virtual space.

“The competition piece “Evolver” started with a meditative musical prolog before applying the virtual headsets that took you on a trippy stylized journey into the pulmonary and circulatory system. With hand gestures you could affect the flow of air or blood, represented by digital blue or red flowing “confetti”.

This smaller installation consisted of film of naked dancers reflected through multiple glass planes.

“En Amour” told a story of love gained and lost in poetic voice over, while images of water, beach shores, and storm clouds enveloped the space all around and below. Currents of light sparks responded to audience hands on the screens, redirecting their flow or making them swirl. The audience was encouraged to interact with the screens and take pictures (without flash).

More from Cannes, especially of the town itself, to come in Part 3.