Cannes v. Netflix: the war on cinema

Via festival-cannes.com

In 1938, the winning list for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival was modified in order to favor films of Nazi propaganda. In protest, Philippe Erlanger, french diplomat and historian, proposed a film festival that could be free, without pressure and without restrictions in his own country. This is how, in 1939, the Cannes Film Festival was born. It wasn't until after WWII that this festival began to gain international attention. Thanks to its openness to italian and neorealist cinema, it quickly became a platform to discover new talents in independent film. In order to avoid conflicts of interest in their international selection during the Cold War, in 1956 the decision was made to eliminate censorship in films both in and out of competition. The festival's core value proposition and main distinction has always been to promote freedom of expression. 

Via Tumblr. 

The Cannes Film Festival has always been surrounded by controversy. In 1954, actress Simone Silva posed half-naked to the press in an improvised photoshoot in Île Sainte Marguerite. This action was prompted by the photographers, some of whom ended up with broken bones in the turmoil. In 1960, the movie La Dolce Vita won the Palm d'Or, the festival's highest recognition, but was vetoed by the Vatican under penalty of excommunication. In 2002, the movie Irréversible showed such explict scenes of violence, murder and rape, that several members of the audience fainted and required medical attention. In 2015, access to the red carpet was denied to several women for not wearing heels, even though some of them were wearing flat shoes for medial reasons. This resulted in criticism to the festival and rebellion against the dress code from actress Kristen Stewart, who was a member of the jury for that year's competition. 

Most recently, in the 2018 edition, the two most anticipated films of the year, Alfonso Cuarón's Roma and Orson Wells's last film The Other Side of the Wind, were left out of competition when their distributor, Netflix, retrieved all its films from the festival following a restrictive requirement to enter competition. In 2017, a new rule stated that for a film to enter competition, it must be played in local french theaters. Netflix hadn't had any issues with this rule, releasing their films for limited theatrical releases to enter them in competition. However, french law indicates that a film cannot be played in on demand platforms after less than three years of its theatrical release. This law opposes the "wherever, whenever" value proposition of streaming platforms such as Netflix. Roma was then presented at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion.

Via Variety. 

The Cannes Film Festival has always had as mission to "draw attention towards cinema with the objective of contributing to the development of cinema, promoting the film industry in a global scale and celebrating international cinema". According to festival director, the issue with Netflix is that it wants all the benefits of the film industry without contributing to it. This statement was echoed around the world. The UK Film Association (UKFA) stated that "a complete advance towards the short or inexistent time frame between theater release and streaming release could put in risk hundreds of cinemas throughout the country." Like so, the U.S. maintains the law that demands a period of 90 days between theater release and on demand release. 

Jury for the 72nd Cannes Film Festival via Paralelo 32. 

However, there is still no evidence of this trend. In fact, trends indicate that streaming platform subscribers are also recurring visitors to theaters. That is why Netflix insists that, for them, the festival's restriction is unfounded. The platform's content director, Ted Sarandos, has commented that Netflix believes that the big screen is the best way to see a movie, while the UKCA director insists that theaters and streaming are not mutually exclusive, but coexistent and even complementary. Alejandro González Iñárritu, renowned mexican director and president of this year's jury, openly supported Netflix at the festival's inauguration, argumenting that international theaters are not very inclusive with non-english films and Netflix compensates this lack of distribution of art house cinema with the common purpose of promoting and broadcast the seventh art. 

Several proposals have been issued by critics and collaborators to end this war: the first option is that Netflix movies that result winners in the festival have an extended theatrical release in local theaters of France. Another one suggests that these movies should be removed from Netflix France's content catalogue while the movie is still in theaters. However, the french film industry does not yield in their defensive posture towards the theatrical experienice of cinema. It is still unknown whether or not this conflict will reach a satisfying resolution.

Via Film Companion. 

Not too long ago, Charles Rivkin, director of the Motion Picture Asociation of America (MPAA), publicly stated that we must remember that this is not the first time that cinema faces threatening competition from emerging means of entertainment. From the creation of the colored television to the rise of Internet and videogames, the audience has insisted that it will soon be the end of cinema. 

"And yet, here we are."

This is the second consecutive year in which Netflix presents no film in or out of competition in the Cannes Film Festival (May 14th to 25th, 2019), but will be part of the festival as distributor, seeking acquisitions.