by Helen Barlow
Thierry Fremaux may be the director of the Cannes Film Festival, but his heart lies in his hometown of Lyon. He is also a lover of old movies and is the director of the Lumiere Institute, which specialises in preserving and showcasing cinema classics. It’s named after the pioneering Lumiere brothers, who invented the revolutionary Cinematographe, a camera that could record, develop and project film, in Lyon in 1895.
Incredibly, Fremaux also has a third role as the director of the Lumiere Film Festival, which has taken place in October since 2009. Over the years, the festival has developed to also encompass new cinema. As the director of Cannes, Fremaux has considerable clout in attracting big names to the festival.
Each year, a special Prix Lumiere is awarded to one of cinema’s greats. Last year, it was Jane Campion and this year the honour went to Tim Burton, who thanked the festival at numerous events including the screenings of his films.
“This festival is so great because it’s purely about movies and not business or awards and that’s why it’s so strong and powerful and beautiful.”
At the closing ceremony, Fremaux told the crowd how their uproarious response to Burton’s presence attests to his incredible popularity as an artist, to his artistic ability and his ability to present humanity in his films.
Burton admits the festival is now one of his favourites. “As Arnold Schwarzenegger says, I will be back.”
Fremaux announced that Sleepy Hollow had won a poll voted on by students as their favourite Burton film. Incredibly, the filmmaker has only been Oscar-nominated twice, in the animation category for Frankenweenie and Corpse Bride. He says that his favourite film is probably Ed Wood, even if he admits it was also his biggest box office bomb. The film played in competition in Cannes long before Fremaux came along.
FilmInk was only at the Lyon festival in its final days, when there were two stand-out screenings of landmark silent films that have been painstakingly restored and were accompanied by live music. On Thursday, the 1929 film Dans La Nuit, probably the final French film of the silent era, screened to the playing of an incredible organist at the city’s spaceship-like Auditorium. But the piece de resistance was a German orchestra accompanying a screening of Murnau’s classic Nosferatu, which is celebrating its centenary this year. It happened at the Lyon Opera House which is black and steely and postmodern and would surely be to Burton’s taste.
Likewise, Burton would approve of Guillermo del Toro’s new stop motion animated musical version of Pinocchio which is coming to Netflix in December. The Mexican filmmaker was unable to attend in Lyon as his mother suddenly passed away, but he sent a video message to the film’s sold-out screening.
“Animation is art; it’s not a genre just for kids,” he insisted. “It took 14 to 15 years to get this made and it had to be just the right atmosphere for my partner and I,” he said of his co-director Mark Gustafson.
Del Toro asked Cate Blanchett to be part of the project when she starred in his previous feature, Nightmare Alley. The Australian actress has a prominent role voicing a monkey named Sprezzatura that befriends and assists Pinocchio. The film is visually stunning and inventive.
