cinema

Our guest film correspondent Séamas McSwiney will be sending us special reports from the Cannes 2015 film festival over the coming weeks, starting with a preview of this year's Festival. 

Cannes is a leveller where new talent gets an upgrade. As the stardust sprinkles down, less known filmmakers get to profit from the enormous media presence that has mostly come to cover the celebrity glam. At the Oscars, the surprises, if any, are planned, predicted and marketed. In Cannes the surprises are real and its savvy juxtaposition of styles, themes and exoticism make the seaside town the capital of World Cinema for 12 days in May.

Of the thousand or so films screening in Cannes, about 100 are selected and invited and, of these, about 20 are in competition.

Irish eyes will be on two competition films with County Kerry connections. Michael Fassbender hails from Killarney and will star in a new film of Macbeth, alongside French actress Marion Cotillard who plays his dark lady wife, directed by Australian Justin Kurzel. Interestingly the same trio are the prime players of another 2015 movie called Assassin's Creed, a title that echoes Macbeth.

Séamas McSwiney has decades of experience in film journalism, and work published in top international publications. As our guest film correspondent he has been sending us special reports from the Cannes 2014 film festival.

The final red carpet parade up the steps of the Cannes Palais for the awards ceremony took place exceptionally on a Saturday this year. Cinema and politics synchronised and the calendar was adjusted because the French EU elections were on Sunday. Quentin and Uma showed up for the 20th anniversary of the Pulp Fiction Palme d'Or in 1994. And to the delight of some and the exasperation of others Tarantino presented the closing film a new HD copy of Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars for its 50th anniversary. Cannes eschews consensus to the very last screening.

Séamas McSwiney has decades of experience in film journalism, and work published in top international publications. As our guest film correspondent he will be sending us special reports from the Cannes 2014 film festival.

More than halfway through and it's time to look back and forward to see if we can spot winners and thematic trends among the films in competition. The kick-off topic was the perennial Woman in Film debate; both in front of the camera and behind it, what is made of women's identity and if women get enough opportunity to give their vision.

Italy's Alice Rohrwacher's The Wonders and Japan's Naomi Kawase's Still The Water both employ the mysteries of mother nature as a sounding board for human nature. The former does so in a hippie-ish pastoral Tuscan environment involving beekeeping, the latter on a storm lashed island in Japan as it explores fishing, death and the depths of human fidelity. Both films contrast the intelligence of boys and girls. Guess who come out best? Both are free flowing, individualistic and stylistically ambitious; audience patience is rewarded ...or not.

Séamas McSwiney has decades of experience in film journalism, and work published in top international publications. As our guest film correspondent he will be sending us special reports from the Cannes 2014 film festival.

‘GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FILM! What place for women in today's film industry?' This was the catchy title of the European Audiovisual Industry's annual workshop conference at Cannes this year. The UKFilm pavilion held a similar debate a day before. And these are but two of many expressions of discontent regarding the presence and the place of women in the film industry. Such rumblings are neither new nor unjustified in the face of the statistics and tendencies.

A favourite among film feminists (of both sexes) is the one regarding the depiction of women or the famous Bechdel Test (Google it). Basically, for a film to pass this test, "it has to have at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something besides a man." It is surprising the number of films that don't pass.

Still Cannes does its best to redress the imbalance in its own way. Thierry Fremaux (the Festival's director) insists that he favours films from women when the quality justifies it, claiming that a higher proportion of female directed films are selected than are proposed to him.

Séamas McSwiney has decades of experience in film journalism, and work published in some top international publications. As our guest film correspondent he will be sending us special reports from the Cannes 2014 film festival, starting with this preview.

It's that time of year again, where Glamour, Art and Business get together on the Riviera, in search of attention, glory and profit.

The press conference to announce the fifty or so films in the Official Selection of the Festival de Cannes, (Competition, Un Certain Regard, Out-of-Competition, Midnight screenings, etc) was a jovial event, it being the last over which Gilles Jacob would preside.

He and the General Delegate, Thierry Frémaux, were sat beside the official posters featuring a shot of Marcello Mastroianni from Fellini's 8½. He's the Cannes ‘poster boy' to counter the recent series of alluring actresses who have adorned recent years' posters, considered by some to be a tad sexist. Marcello is therefore this year's ‘male object' for the ogling eyes of all admirers.