Festivals - a French Speciality
Cannes, with its red carpet and its film-stars dressed by top fashion houses… Avignon, with its courtyard in the Palais des Papes… Saint-Malo with its “Astonishing Traveller” writers… Marciac and Juan-les-Pins with their American jazz musicians… Many a French town has made its name with its festival.
In Cannes, the festival has been held for 63 years: film directors from all over the world dream only of being there for those ten days of May when sequins and bling vie with the pictures and the music of the films. Winning the Palme d’Or? Wishful thinking for most, but what does that matter! The main thing is to be seen and to make the most of the terrific springboard to notoriety that the festival represents.
Another annual get-together is the Avignon Festival in July. This event has been the undisputed high-point of international French-language theatre for 65 years. Here, the audience is the winner just as much as the great playwrights. Large numbers of people from all walks of life throng the town, filling theatre venues, but also schoolyards and stages improvised in the streets or in the back rooms of cafés.
for more information : Actualités en France n°21 (July 2010)