Latest news with #CinémaDeLaPlage
New York Times
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
When Watching These Films at Cannes, Feel Free to Put Your Feet in the Sand
On a warm afternoon in late April, La Croisette hummed with life. Families pushed strollers along the boardwalk, children trailed behind with dripping ice cream cones, and tourists posed for selfies silhouetted against the Mediterranean. At Plage Macé, a centrally-located public beach, people tanned, played volleyball and went for a dip. For the next two weeks, Plage Macé has been transformed into an outdoor theater, outfitted with a massive movie screen — nearly 80 feet by 20 feet — and an elaborate sound system, with 600 deck chairs available on a first-come-first-served basis. This is Cinéma de la Plage, the Cannes Film Festival's free program of nightly film screenings. At a film festival notorious for its exclusivity, this is one event where everyone is welcome, no matter who they are — or how they are dressed. 'Cinéma de la Plage is evidence that the Cannes Film Festival never forgets it has to remain a cultural and popular event,' Thierry Frémaux, the festival's artistic director, explained in an email. Camilla Amelotti works at a children's attraction, Les P'tits Bateaux (The Li'l Boats), directly in front of Plage Macé. In between selling souvenir magnets and handing out remote controls for miniature yachts, she described Cinéma de la Plage as an accessible alternative to the festival's indoor screenings, especially for film-loving locals. 'It's really nice,' said Amelotti, 28. 'You just have to have time to go and the patience to wait to get in.' She added that for many people who work in the tourism industry, the film festival is the busiest time of year. Ilona el-Hasnaoui, 26, has a front-row seat to Cinéma de la Plage from behind the counter of Kiosque 9 Bis, a gleaming white food stand with a turquoise awning situated directly in front of Plage Macé. Hasnaoui is the store's manager and often stays until closing time — 1 a.m. during the festival — so she steals glances at the screen while serving sandwiches and crepes. She said that business picked up during the nightly screenings. 'People can see the movie from here,' she said, indicating the space directly in front of her kiosk. 'They get their food here and they sit behind the railing,' she said, noting that no food or beverages were allowed on the beach during the films and that deck chairs were a precious commodity. 'There are many, many people. If you want a seat, you need to wait.' Cinéma de la Plage is officially part of Cannes Classics, the festival section devoted to film history that was started in the early 2000s. Frémaux, who has worked at Cannes since 1999 and became festival director in 2007, said his desire to inaugurate a free, outdoor program stemmed from personal experience. 'When I was just a festivalgoer, I wasn't always able to get into the movie theaters and I thought it would be a good idea if the festival offered something completely different to the public, especially in the evenings,' he said. 'When I took over, I suggested we hold a daily event on the beach.' Given the festival's unique location on the French Riviera, it may seem hard to believe that movies on the beach were never a major part of the event during its first 50 years. (Frémaux pointed to some earlier one-off events, including an apocryphal midnight screening of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's 'Parsifal,' a four-hour-and-fifteen-minute film version of Richard Wagner's opera, which ended with breakfast on the beach at dawn.) While classics, often presented in fresh restorations, dominated the early Cinéma de la Plage programs, these days the lineup also includes cult and contemporary offerings, as well as sneak previews of films about to hit French cinemas and even the occasional world premiere. Because this is Cannes and a high percentage of the world's major filmmakers congregate here during festival time, it's not uncommon for directors to pop over to present their films if they're programmed in Cinéma de la Plage. Frémaux reminisced about Quentin Tarantino showing up with Uma Thurman to introduce a 35-millimeter print of 'Pulp Fiction' in 2014, and Jackie Chan arriving by boat for a screening of his 1982 kung fu classic 'Project A' for its 40th anniversary in 2012. 'And there was Agnès Varda, who in the rain convinced the audience to stay by talking to them for several minutes before the film,' he said of the French director's 'One Sings, the Other Doesn't,' which was screened during the memorably wet 2018 edition of the festival. Beyond films, Cinéma de la Plage has also hosted concerts, dance parties and even karaoke. This year's lineup features films by John Woo, Nanni Moretti and Terrence Malick; a new restoration of King Vidor's 1946 western 'Duel in the Sun' undertaken by Martin Scorsese; and a new documentary about Brigitte Bardot. 'Cinéma de la Plage is a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed,' said Peter Bradshaw, the chief film critic for The Guardian, who has attended the Cannes Film Festival since 1999. 'And I think it's a very good thing for Cannes to do,' he added, 'because Cannes is sometimes criticized for being too closed off and elitist.' And while there is undeniable excitement whenever a world premiere takes place at Plage Macé (as with 'F9,' the ninth film in the 'Fast and Furious' franchise, in 2021) Cinéma de la Plage provides especially inspiring conditions for seeing a classic foreign or art house film. 'On occasion you can get to see '8½' at some repertory movie theater, but it's a rare thing to see it on the biggest possible screen,' Bradshaw said, referring to the 1963 Federico Fellini film, which screened here on the beach in 2014. (He fondly recalled seeing 'Jaws' — the ultimate beach movie — on Plage Macé in 2013). While accredited journalists and film industry members — including those who find themselves locked out of other festival screenings — turn up at Cinéma de la Plage, the program is particularly valuable for locals who have comparatively few opportunities to see other films at the festival. (No tickets are sold to any of the festival screenings, which require hard-to-come-by invitations for the public. A limited number of these are made available to Cannes residents). 'It's a chance for the festival to reach out to the town, to reach out to the Côte d'Azur generally,' Bradshaw said. Beyond all that, however, Cinéma de la Plage also provides a striking visual. The image of its majestic screen, silhouetted against the sea and sky, has become an indelible part of the festival's image. 'It looks so great as a spectacle in itself, on the beach, especially as night falls,' Bradshaw said. 'Even if you're not going to a movie there and just walking up and down the Croisette, which is a signature experience of being at Cannes.' Plage Macé is only three hundred yards from the red carpet. And yet, with the sound of the waves and the smell of the sea, you might as well be light-years away from the glamour, adrenaline and stress that are otherwise inescapable at the event. Leaning back in your deck chair, this can feel like the best seat at the festival — in the sand, under the stars. 'Of course, Cannes is the biggest festival in the world, of course there's a market, there's media pressure, the competition, the awards,' Frémaux said. 'But for everyone,' he added, 'going to the beach is a way of not forgetting that, in essence, cinema is all about a silver screen, a crowd and a film.'
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes Film Festival Workers Launch Fresh Call To Action Over Precarious Working Conditions
Cannes Film Festival staff are among a collective of French cultural workers who have launched a fresh call to action over what they have described as their precarious and unfair working conditions. In a statement shared today, and available to read in full below, advocacy group Sous Les Écrans La Dèche: Collectif Des Précaires Des Festivals De Cinéma (which translates to Under The Screens, The Waste: The Collective of Precarious Workers at Film Festivals), writes that their attempts to gain contractual rights like unemployment and retirement benefits have been 'abruptly blocked.' The group is calling on all French workers to organize and demand action at next week's Cannes Film Festival. More from Deadline Sebastian Stan And Leo Woodall To Star In Justin Kurzel's 'Burning Rainbow Farm' For Rocket Science Sebastian Stan & Leo Woodall Set For Justin Kurzel's 'Burning Rainbow Farm' Cannes Unveils Cinéma De La Plage Line-Up Featuring Terrence Malick's 'A Hidden Life', Billy Wilder's 'Sunset Boulevard' & Nanni Moretti's 'Palombella Rossa' The group's main objectives are the same as we reported ahead of last year's Cannes Film Festival, during which they executed a series of small demonstrations. They want to be included in France's unique unemployment insurance program for entertainment workers and technicians. Known as Intermittence de Spectacle, the scheme supports entertainment workers on short-term contracts with an unemployment benefit when they are between jobs or projects. The payments are funded through taxes paid by employers. Due to quirks in the regulations, many workers at French film festivals have long been excluded from the unemployment benefit. Instead, they are hired and handed flat short-term contracts. The collective is campaigning to be included in the scheme, citing the inherent seasonal nature of the work. Following last year's Cannes demonstrations and a year of organizing, France's four major unions (CFDT, CGT, FO, and CFTC) and FICAM, which represents the management of France's film festival, drafted a pact to finally include festival workers in the scheme. However, the unions failed to reach a final agreement with UNEDIC, the French government agency that regulates unemployment insurance. 'After a year of intense efforts, we are baffled and indignant,' the group writes in their call to action. 'Many of us had eked out a meagre living all year, stretching thin salaries and compensation even thinner, hoping that the predicament was in the process of being solved.' The letter continues: 'Hundreds of us are waiting for the administrative process to be completed. Likewise, dozens of festivals are waiting to be able to offer employees who work for them only intermittently an appropriate job contract. This is a second call to action for all workers. If workers cannot earn a decent living from the jobs they do at festivals, how will the festivals keep going?' Sous Les Écrans La Dèche includes 300 film festival workers from across France, including staff who work on the Cannes Official Selection, the festival's Marché du Film, and parallel sections of Directors' Fortnight and Critics' Week. The Sous les Écrans la Dèche movement has some high-profile supporters. French filmmaker Justine Triet wore the group's bright red pin on her suit lapel as she walked the red carpet for Palme d'Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall at Cannes in 2023. Payal Kapadia was wearing the same pin as she debuted All We Imagine As Light on the Croisette in 2024. Reall the full Call To Action below: One year ago, we mobilized to obtain better working conditions and, notably, to regain 'intermittent employee' status for thousands of French film-festival workers. We wish we could announce that our voices had been heard. True, the first step towards organizing our branch has been taken. But the 'intermittent employee' status that would entitle us to unemployment and retirement benefits remains out of reach Last year, after the Cannes Film Festival, the Ministries of Culture and Labor and the CNC notified us that our demand for 'intermittent employee' status had been denied. They said that we could obtain the right to this type of job contract only after we drafted an appropriate collective bargaining agreement and submitted it to the government. An official was appointed to expedite matters. He mediated six months of negotiations between festival workers, trade unions, festival organizers, and government agencies. The four major trade unions (the CFDT, CGT, FO, and CFTC) and the management of the festivals, represented by FICAM, applied themselves to drafting an amendment covering 'Film and TV Festivals,' to be appended to the collective bargaining agreement existing for ESCE (Entreprises au Service de la Création et de l'Événement: Services Required for Staging Events and Shows). After 6 months of talks, the amendment was signed in December of 2024 by all of the parties concerned. Management was represented by the FICAM, the SYNPASE, and LEVENEMENT; labor, by the following unions: F3C, CFDT, CGT Spectacle, SPIAC – CGT, SNRT- CGT Audiovisuel, and SNAJ – CFTC. The goals sought by all the parties were to define and structure the film and TV festival sector, and to establish job definitions and pay scales. These specifications would make it possible not only to regulate periods of employment, but also, and especially, to set up unemployment compensation for temporary or 'intermittent' festival workers. A list of the job titles eligible for intermittent status had to be defined. These titles would then be integrated into List 4 of services required for the staging of creations and events (Prestation au service de la création et de l'événement), part of Appendix 8 of French unemployment insurance legislation. Our livelihoods, endangered by 2021 unemployment insurance reforms, would no longer be so precarious. On April 5, 2025, the General Labor Authority approved the branch agreement, with a publication in the legislative record. Throughout the process, we had been assured by unions, management organizations, and government representatives that modifying the list of job titles would merely be an administrative formality. On May 1st, the amendment was therefore extended to all film and TV festivals. At this point, only one hurdle remained. Film and TV festival workers would regain their 'intermittent worker' rights as soon as List 4 of Appendix 8 of the unemployment insurance laws was updated. On April 23, the list of trades was submitted to the UNEDIC, the French government agency that regulates unemployment insurance. However, at this meeting, the parties involved failed to reach an agreement. As a result, festival workers' access to intermittent status was abruptly blocked for the foreseeable future. After a year of intense efforts, we are baffled and indignant. Many of us had eked out a meagre living all year, stretching thin salaries and compensation even thinner, hoping that the predicament was in the process of being solved. Hundreds of us are waiting for the administrative process to be completed. Likewise, dozens of festivals are waiting to be able to offer employees who work for them only intermittently an appropriate job contract. This is a second call to action for all workers. If workers cannot earn a decent living from the jobs they do at festivals, how will the festivals keep going? Best of Deadline 'Poker Face' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Arrive On Peacock? Everything We Know About Celine Song's 'Materialists' So Far 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
