Cannes Private View

Cannes and other towns have long been plagued by (or served by) street vendors selling counterfeit brands of handbags, dark glasses and other luxury goods. Well perhaps no more: Cannes announces crackdown Implementing Article 321-1 of the French penal code, persons found buying counterfeit goods are guilty of possession, punishable by a fine of up to e375,000 and 5-year prison term.

Street professions (entertainers and such) are also banned from the seafront from April to September and other main streets during conferences and conventions. Though Cannes has swept the Croisette clean, we noticed Nice has cleared them from the Promenade too. So take care of bargain offers - tourists are already being prosecuted! You may think a third of a million dollars fine is a bit stiff for buying a dodgy pair of sunglasses, but thats the maximum., and some tourists have actually been fined a couple of thousand dollars. Notice they don’t fine the street vendors, because they dont have much money.

The best way to discourage them is if there are no customers. Needless to say in Ventimiglia there are still armies of street vendors, some trading within eyesight of the policestation, oblivious. Its the French customs at the border crossing you have to worry about.

Take out a second mortgage and buy the real thing?

Then, as an aside — a whisper of the protocol to come — they add, “And don’t wear white socks.” I think they’re joking, but in a flurry of good-natured e-mails I’m assured that more than one unfortunate fashion “faux pas-er” has been forced to turn around and head down the steps in sartorial shame. A week before I leave for cannes to participate in L’Atelier du Festival, the co-production market of the Cannes Film Festival, I receive an e-mail from the festival reminding me to bring my black tie; without it I will not be allowed to ascend the Red Carpet for the competition screenings.

Soon after my arrival in Cannes it becomes clear that the festival doesn’t shy away from the whole truth of the movie industry. Rather, it embraces and celebrates the glamour, the commerce and the art of filmmaking in equal measure. It’s a heady, over-the-top mix that makes my 10 days at the Atelier an intoxicating carnival.

I’m one of 18 international filmmakers whose projects have been invited to the festival, all expenses paid. Our films are on the verge of being made; we all have a polished script, the commitment of a first producer and partial financing. The Atelier is intended to get us over the final financing hump and into production by organizing meetings during the festival with potential financial partners: distributors, sales agents, international co-producers and the elusive and coveted equity financiers.

In its second year, the Atelier has already proven successful. Seventeen of the first year’s 18 projects have been funded and are in either pre- or postproduction. Amazing results, but still, I try to approach it with a Buddhist mind-set, as I’ve already suffered plenty of the ups and downs of the financing roller coaster.

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