From the archives to the future

In 1959, André Malraux closed the Festival de Cannes with these words: “(…) I dedicate an imaginary Palme d’Or to this invisible heaven, to the mysterious fraternity of images of the earth as a place of joy and of the earth as blood-spattered or threatened – where Chaplin and Eisenstein join with the youngest amongst you, to the invisible dreams of humanity that you bring to life one by one, and that you, first and foremost, bring to life for all humanity.”

Dreams are even more beautiful if reality comes to join them. In 1999, the Festival de Cannes entrusted the handling of its archives to the Cinémathèque Française. Thanks to the work done there, a memory bank of 63 years of the Festival de Cannes has been inventoried, archived, stored and made available for research purposes at 51 rue de Bercy⁽¹⁾. If a film student knocks on the door of the media library and asks: “What is there on the Festival de Cannes?” the answer will be: “To date, 2,272 files.”

These files span 63 years of letters, telegrams, drawings and correspondence from Sergio Leone, Marcel Pagnol, François Truffaut, Romain Gary, Federico Fellini, and others, as well as precious information on the evolution of the Festival event up to the present day. For example, Section 5 of the Festival statutes drawn up in 1948 stipulates that “The Festival Committee reserves the right to refuse the admission of a film if it deems it to be an affront to national sentiment.” In those days, various countries selected the films that were to be screened at the Festival, until one day in 1972, when the Festival organisers decided to select the films that would be presented themselves, a practice that film festivals around the world went on to imitate. That year, the Festival did not take place for financial reasons, but a gold mine of information is available for the other Festival years: policy reports, sketched plans of spectators’ boxes, publication cover pages, invitation cards, poster designs, screening programmes, typed guest lists, score sheets with the points awarded by members of the jury, etc. These archives bear testimony to the issues at stake in the Festival and to the cinematographic and political environment in which it evolved during various historical periods. They offer a rich background on the society and audiences during each of these eras, as well as charming glimpses into the past, e.g. the menu of the “private dinner” held on 18 May 1958, illustrated by Bernard Buffet, is a delight to read: “Strasbourg Foie gras, Sherry Consommé, Stuffed Chicken American-style, Parisian Potatoes, etc.”

Opening up Pandora’s box, one may be surprised, however, not to find more photographs: as the Festival had no assigned photographer, any photo archives that exist are in the possession of agencies and collectors. As for filmed images, the main owners since 2001 are Gaumont, Pathé, Capa, the INA and Canal +. To mark the Festival’s 60^th anniversary, the INA created an interactive panorama that enabled Internet users to view all the press commentary INA owned about the Festival, year by year. Much of it was written by the chronicler François Chalais, who believed that memory is a means of preserving a “past in the present”.

So what about the present? An increasingly palpable will to preserve, collect and showcase this precious heritage for historians and film enthusiasts can be felt in and around the Festival. It also fascinates the public, whose interest in the Festival and all aspects of the cinema is growing all the time. At the beginning of 2010, Gilles Jacob launched a project for the inventory and classification of his own archives, where, one may well imagine, many treasures are to be found. Plans are coming together for a Cité du Cinéma in Cannes, which will include a Festival de Cannes Museum stocked with the Festival archives, the “Jacob collection” and access to the films that have been screened there since the earliest editions. If the project receives the required funding, the Cité should be inaugurated in 2014/2015, leaving us plenty of time to prepare for more wonderful, beautiful memories that are yet to be discovered.

> More information on the archives

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^1-To date, the sections that have been handled and released for communication cover:
• The years 1938-1965 for the “administrative” fund, related to the organisation of the Festival, comprising 847 files.
• The years 1949-1976 for the “press” fund, which provides a panorama of critical responses to the films presented each year in France and abroad, comprising 1,202 files.
• The years 1946-1987 for the “film department” fund, comprising 223 files.
The complete directory of these files can be consulted online at: http://cineressources.bifi.fr
A selection of these files is accessible at http://festival-de-cannes.bifi.fr/