Well, that makes more sense. When Cannes 2007 first mooted their super-auteur omnibus, reports were that the two-to-three minute shorts by directors previously honored by Cannes would be destroyed after a single showing. Today’s news, per Chris Tilly at Time Out London is that the winsome minis will be shown on French TV simultaneously. Can le web be far behind? “A handful of the world’s most internationally acclaimed directors have been commissioned… Walter Salles, Ken Loach, Roman Polanski, Nanni Moretti and the like have been asked to shoot three minute shorts which will then be compiled to create Chacun Son Cinema [To each his own cinema], a feature that will be screened simultaneously at the festival and on French television on May 20. The 35 directors: Theo Angelopoulos, Olivier Assayas, Bille August, Jane Campion, Youssef Chahine, Chen Kaige, Michael Cimino, Ethan and Joel Coen, David Cronenberg, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Manoel De Oliveira, Raymond Depardon, Atom Egoyan, Amos Gitai, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, Aki Kaurismaki, Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano, Andrei Konchalovsky, Claude Lelouch, Ken Loach, Nanni Moretti, Roman Polanski, Raoul Ruiz, Walter Salles, Elia Suleiman, Tsai Ming Liang, Gus Van Sant, Lars Trier, Wim Wenders, Wong Kar-Wai and Zhang Yimou. Festival director Gilles Jacob‘s statement from the Festival de Cannes website is below. “Times change. Then they return to their starting point, enriched by their own metamorphoses. When, more than a year go, we asked ourselves how to celebrate the 60th Festival de Cannes, we were sure at least of one thing: no return to the past, deadly commemoration or blissful self-congratulation, nothing which makes the future even more intimidating.

Anniversaries are beneficial in that they allow reflection and a new burst of energy. The energy to revitalise each of our actions, over and beyond even this symbolic year. The dynamism of our artistic choices as incarnated by our future poster. The tightening of our programming to be able to better highlight works of value. The pleasure of a new theatre. Then, an idea very quickly imposed itself: gather together the artists. Those who have the virtue – all the more critical today – of advancing cinema as an art form. Those who had confidence in Cannes and whom Cannes in turn assisted. Those who were free and wished to give news of themselves by via the cinema. In a word, celebrate 60 years of creation by a creation. In so doing, the festival would not salute simply the past six decades but rather the great filmmakers who come together here once a year to this place where the “spirit blows where it wishes”, in the words of Robert Bresson, so often evoked in the film under preparation, a hearth where the artistic spark can once again burst aflame when the lights dim and the film begins…
A film therefore, but what film? The idea of the film composed of sketches does not date from only yesterday, and motion-picture history teems with more or less successful vignettes: The Seven Deadly Sins, Les baisers, The World’s Greatest Swindles, Six in Paris, without forgetting the quite recent Paris, I Love You.
In this particular case, it was a matter of reuniting a group of creators – all universally famous – who represent both their countries and a proud conception of cinema, for a stroll around a unique theme, springboard for their inspiration. Hailing from 5 continents and 25 different countries, these 33 directors* will reveal, in 3 minutes each, their current state of mind as inspired by the motion-picture theatre – a second restriction but also, of course, a promise of Paradise! A family stroll back through memories, dreams, bursts of laughter, cries of alarm and emotion. The novelty of the form derives from its extreme division and the pleasant sweetness of its lightness. This writing does not depict a series of repetitions in theatres of astonishingly diverse appearance, but rather a series of improbable encounters – Wenders filmed in the Congo, Tsai Ming Liang in Kuala Lumpur and Cronenberg in the… toilets! No director had knowledge of the other fragments, or even synopses from his colleagues. They all accepted to discover them at the same time as the festival-goers themselves, on May 20th, as well as the general public, as it will be replayed the very same evening on television1.
Do they form a school? No, even if they all revisit the heart of things, they are individuals each expressing his aesthetic orientation, poets who capture a parcel of the world and transfigure it, each in their own way. They are highly industrious, they work hard and are not duped, for they take part in an art, the cinema, which under our very eyes creates its own history. The modesty of the budget allocated to each has stimulated them to be not only particularly creative, unexpected, comic, tender, cynical, contemplative, funny, moving or provocative, but accessible and audacious as well. It was when thinking about this melting-pot of cultures, origins and talents that we conferred on this feature film the title of To Each His Cinema. Let us hope that this great adventure, even if short-lived, will give audiences desire to travel in the company of filmmakers who have never ceased to astonish and renew creation. But is this not one of the very functions of art itself?
Gilles Jacob

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