Media at the receiving end

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

CANNES, MAY 14. As the Cannes International Film Festival gets into day five here, which is not even half way through the event, there is such a lot of incomprehension and even tension that one wonders what this beautiful resort is getting into.

Roland Joffe gave tens of interviews, but could not manage to meet the only officially accredited journalist from India: this correspondent from The Hindu.

Obviously, the press attache in-charge of scheduling Joffe's interviews had no idea about the man's background. This director, whose movie, Vatel opened the festival, has been intimately involved with India, particularly Calcutta, and he would, one is certain, never have refused to meet an Indian media person.

That Joffe knew nothing about such a request from The Hindu is apparent, but what is not clear is why he chooses not to take a look at the names of all those who wanted to see him.

Arundhati Roy, the third Indian to be on the top Cannes jury in the past three decades after Mrinal Sen and Mira Nair, refused to meet The Hindu. Of course, the request was sent up to her. And she had promised in New Delhi, hours after she had had been selected to serve on the jury, that she would meet this correspondent at Cannes.

What could be the reason? The press attache in charge of this says that Ms Roy wants to concentrate on her work, and not get distracted!

The Press - and there are about 4,000 journalists here - is not having a great time here. The other day, at the media conference with Brian de Palma (whose Mission to Mars was screened Outside Competition), he literally flew off the handle when a critic asked him if his latest work was a homage to Hitchcock. (De Palma has always been influenced by the British master of suspense, and he has admitted to that.) ``Homage? What is that word supposed to mean - stealing or something - that I am a rip-off artist ? De Palma shot back irritatedly.

De Palma was so impatient to get out of the conference that he was ready to leave even before the press began shooting questions. Even the moderator gently chided the film-maker.

Later, De Palma said that he hated such meetings. ''I do not like to be scrutinised by anybody. Besides, everything is so star- driven these days that newspapers and television seldom quote me``.

Another director, just 20 and with her second film in Competition, Samira Makhmalbhaf from Iran snapped at this correspondent when asked how she would create a niche independent of her famous movie-making father, Mohsen Makhmalbhaf. ''I cannot change my name, can I?,`` she shot back. Already tense in this great circus called Cannes, Samira clearly finds it tough to handle fame that appears to have knocked her clean.

Luc Besson, the chairman of the jury, did not get angry, but his bored, could-not-care look throughout the press meet that he and his colleagues addressed recently, seemed nothing short of recklessness.

Besson has been avoiding journalists lately in the wake of poor reviews for his The Story of Joan of Arc and his own divorce. He was absolutely uninterested at the questions that ranged from the cross-cultural nature of contemporary cinema to the Cannes' Mayor ordering beach parties to close early.

Well, Besson, in any case, is a controversial choice for the slot he has been given. He falls outside the tradition of French cinema as one has known it for about 40 years. Men like Truffaut and Godard had been steeped in the art and history of this medium. Not so Besson.

His pictures are popular, and he has never said that he is an auteur. ''I make neither art nor culture. I tell stories. I am a story-teller``, he once described himself. It is, therefore, not surprising that when critics panned his opening work at Cannes a few years ago, ''The Fifth Element``, it attracted fairly large audiences all over the world.

Naturally, all this has led to considerable speculation here about how Besson's taste was going to affect the awards on the final night. It is hard to imagine that he and his team would honour people like Theo Angelopoulos or films like Humanity or Rosetta. They might have been audience unfriendly, but they stole the jury's heart all right in the previous years.

Yet, Besson, for all you know, may bring in a whiff of fresh excitement to a festival that is beginning to redefine its image and role, now that its chief, Mr Gilles Jacob, is set to step down after more than two decades.

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