Film Festivals

Film festivals are mostly annual festivals in one or more movie theaters with a special program that showcases many films. The films in a film festival are usually of a recent date and sometimes there is a focus on a specific genre, such as animation or gay and lesbian film festivals.

The San Francisco International Film Festival held in March 1957 was the first North American film festival. It played a huge role in introducing foreign films to American audiences. Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon were examples of this during the first North American Film Festival.

In 1976 the Toronto Film Festival began and has now become the major North American film festival, as well as the most widely attended worldwide. The Ivy Film Festival is the second largest film festival in North America and the only large, student run film festival in the world.

The film festivals in Toronto, Sundance, Venice, Cannes, Sacramento, Moscow, Berlin and Karlovy Vary are listed as so-called ‘A festivals’, because they are the most prestigious film festivals in the world. Some people argue that the Cannes Film Festival is the world’s most prestigious film festival, This film festival was first held from September 20th to October 5th , 1946.Since then it has been held annually in May with few exceptions. Cannes is a resort town in France.

The non-public Cannes Film Festival is attended by many movie stars and is a popular venue for movie producers to launch their new films in order to attempt to sell their ideas to the distributors who come from lal over the world to attend this film festival.

By far, the most prestigious award given at the Cannes Film Festival is the Palme d’Or or ‘golden palm’. This award is given for the category of best film. The jury of the film festival, which is made up of a selection of movie professionals, grants other awards as well, including the ‘grand prize’, which is actually the second most prestigious award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Countries that have one the Palme d’Or include the United States with eighteen wins, Italy, with twelve, France with nine, the United Kingdom with eight, as well as several others. The Cannes Film Festival has also been portrayed in many films including ‘Evening in Byzantium’, a 1978 film where the film festival is overtaken by terrorists and stars Jerry London and Glenn Ford.

Another film featuring the Cannes Film Festival is ‘Almost Perfect Affair’, from 9179. This is a romantic comedy about an affair between a producer’s wife and a filmmaker that is set during the film festival. Other films that feature the Cannes Film Festival are Grosse Fatigue, Femme Fatale, La Cite de la peur, and Festival in Cannes.

The Cannes Film Festival is unique in that it is open to all genres of film from all over the world. There is a fine balance between not too traditional and not too sophisticated when it comes to film festivals, and Cannes find this balance and offers it to the film festival audience. The main purpose of the Cannes Film Festival is to give a platform to films from international filmmakers that we may otherwise not have discovered on our own. The main purpose of this film festival is to celebrate film as the wonderful medium it is for expressing and exploring the human condition.

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