2021 Cannes Film Festival
Global Cinema is up and running at the Cannes Festival 2021
By Rita Di Santo
It happened – after last year’s cancellation due to the pandemic, the Cannes film festival finally took place, two months later than its traditional early may slot, but it’s back and offered its best line-up for some time.
Doubly exiting then that Spike Lee’s jury, mainly composed of female members, seemed to recognise that fact in giving the Palme d’Or to Julia Ducournau’s Titane. Ducornau’s film was the wildest movie in competition, an inventive feminist cocktail about a young female serial killer who has sex with a car, she goes on the run, changes her identity, and poses as local boy who went missing a decade earlier. Outrageous, ferocious, courageous, full of madness, and deliberately shocking. It is only her second feature but Ducournau proves she is one of the most promising new voices to hit the international cinema scene in recent years.
The jury made another wise choice in spreading the wealth giving the Grand Prix to two films: Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero, a tense drama about a man caught in a social media storm, and Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s Compartment No. 6, a fascinating story of traveling companions bonding on a train ride from Moscow to Murmansk.
Best Director Prize went to Leos Carax for Annette, an intrepid, daring musical, about a stand-up comic and an opera singer whose love produces a weird child, Annette, a Pinocchio-like wooden puppet whose features are both innocent and inscrutable yet suddenly expressive.
The Award for Best Screenplay went to Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Takamasa Oe for DRIVE My Car, a superb adaptation of a Murakami short story. It folds ideas and emotion origami-style in a harmonious and perfectly balanced story of a theatre director who finds himself confiding in the young woman who has been hired as his driver.
Best Actress went to Renate Reinsve playing Julie in The Worst Person in the World, a Norwegian dark comedy by Joachim Trier, a sexy and funny story of a woman in search of love. While Best Actor went to Caleb Landry Jones for his performance in Australian director Justin Kurzel’s Nitram, a very unsettling film about the horrific Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, 1996.
The Jury Prize was shared by Israeli Navad Lapid’s Ahed’s Knee, about a filmmaker’s trip to a small desert town, andThai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton AS an orchid farmer visiting her ill sister in Bogota, who becomes haunted by weird sounds.
This year’s British films played outside the competition and were mainly made by female directors. In the Director’s Fortnight, Joanna Hogg’s autobiographical The Souvenir Part II was a captivating self-portrait of the artist as a young woman, while Clio Barnard’s Ali & Eva was a deft love story, honest, realistic, and wonderfully written and directed.
During the festival masks were worn throughout the screenings. It was not possible to enter the Palais without having a negative test result or a vaccination. Despite that, the year was characterised by fresh-faced filmmakers and movies that break boundaries, and Cannes reaffirms its position as the best festival in the world with audacity, courage, and ideas, showing that despite COVID: global film is up and running!
Oliver Stone
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass
by Rita Di Santo
Thirty years after J.F.K., Oliver Stone returns to confront the assassination of John F. Kennedy more aggressively than ever. Presented at the Cannes festival this week, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass is a documentary full of new interviews, new research, and new perspectives on the subject. Stone told the press at Cannes:
“In 1963, a great crime happened and people maybe who were born afterward don't know much about it, and they go on with their lives, but they don't realize that the world has been shaped by people before them. President Kennedy was the last American president who really struggled for peace in the world. He called for peace with the Soviet Union, which was the end of the Cold War, the first one to do so. He signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union, the first treaty that existed between the Soviets and the US. It's very important - that treaty is still in effect, basically. He also was looking for a peace with Cuba, which was a big problem for the United States, and remains after 60 years. He sought good relations with Asia, with South America, with Africa as was shown with his concern about Patrice Lumumba's murder in the Congo. Where have you seen an American president do the same thing consistently since then? And above all, as I try to point out because I was in Vietnam, he was withdrawing from Vietnam as early as 1963. The first orders were given for the first 1,000 troops to come out. By December of '63. This is now history but of course you get the wrong history still in the US. We were much criticized for suggesting Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam. But [former] Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara has said bluntly that Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam, no question, no doubt. Even if we lost. Even if the South Vietnamese Government lost to the North Vietnamese. This must not be forgotten. Then of course Bundy, McGeorge Bundy, who was his National Security Advisor, also says the same thing, Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam. Bundy didn't agree with it by the way, but he said he was. Why do we keep this illusion up that Johnson, Lyndon Johnson who succeeded him, is the same man, carried out the same policy as Kennedy? It's false, rubbishes history, and it continues to be a myth and it must be taken apart. Thank God there are young historians now doing this, but still, it's very slow and conservative and rather stupid frankly. But we're trying. Anyway, that's a motive for murder. The motive for murder is change. Kennedy was changing things. Since Kennedy, no American president has come close to making these moves, not close. We now cannot touch the military; we cannot touch the intelligence agencies. So, it's some bind for a president. You're not really in power, you don't really have power because these people do what they want. Things changed on November 22, 1963, up until now. We can change it back.”
After seeing the 50th anniversary specials, the work of the Assassinations Review Board, prompted by the original movie, and all the new evidence, new discoveries, new research, Stone decided he “wanted to make a project that would assemble all this stuff, knowing that there aren't many people in the world who are going to read 12 or 15 books to get this information. Let's bring in the independent researchers that did this work, have them speak for themselves, and give the public this information in a short format. It didn't get finance out of the United States either. We had to go to England to get the money. America is changed. It's become more censorship oriented.”
There were two big mysteries always. Who killed JFK? And what's in the locker at Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico? Then the third mystery was handed, what is the secret between the relationship between former President Trump and Vladimir Putin?
“Now, that's interesting, but it's outside our subject matter. As you know, I do know something about it because I did interview President Putin. And he denies any kind of involvement in any kind of Manchurian Candidate scenario, which is a very American idea, very bad guys, good guys. We must get away from those stereotypes. Our two countries must get along. We must, because frankly there's a much bigger threat ahead than war, than nuclear war. It's climate change. Both countries are very advanced in their research. Russia primarily is doing the most because they really are putting a government effort behind it. The United States makes it a private affair. Although Biden is bringing up the investment, so there's hope. But there's no reason we can't be partners in something like this. And with China too for that matter. So, I don't agree at all with the United States policy of hostility to China, Russia, Iran, and all our other enemies, Venezuela, Cuba. Cuba's yesterday's news. Why do we want enemies? Why? Are they real, or is it because there's a lot of money involved? And we have a massive military industrial complex that requires to be fed with money and emotions and endless amounts of designs for new weapons that cost a fortune. People are making big money on this, and this is a very sick world because of it, and a sick economy. All that money could be used for much better purposes within the United States.
Should your administration have the will to do something about it, maybe create another commission?
I doubt it. I don't think the Biden Administration's even thinking about it. There are three official investigations. The Warren Commission, which I've done my best and many people have done their best to debunk. The second one was the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978/79. And in the film, we show some of the problems they had. George Blakey, who took over the commission, admits that he was lied to by the CIA on a key issue.
Rita Di Santo
Vision
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