Festival de Cannes : Scandals and Controversies
To mark this anniversary season, La Cinémathèque Française looks back from 26 April to 28 May 2017, through a retrospective, at 26 films which have created controversy on the Croisette . Thierry Frémaux, delegate general of the Festival de Cannes, will accompany this programme of films that have been the talk fo the town and gone down in cinema history.
'The Festival de Cannes celebrates its 70th season this year, since the first ever cancelled event in 1939 and its relaunch in 1946, but it's not easy to pin down what best captures its spirit: the official selection, the list of prizewinners, the Palme d'or, the steps, or the red carpet? The press, the market, the public? It's all of those of course, but one other thing has also been a perennial feature throughout the history of the festival: the scandals and controversies, the films which have shocked or disturbed the audience, or those that have been booed or condemned. In the same way as those works which have made the Festival great, these also form part of the legend. And yet it would be over-hasty to brand them merely as troublemakers: all of the films which have caused a ruckus on the Croisette have led to wonderful debates, some of which still rage, and each of them in their own way has raised questions about the history of contemporary cinema, and helped prevent the world's greatest festival from becoming a place of bland official consensus.'
Thierry Frémaux
