Cannes Day 5

Rain-soaked Croisette in Cannes Film Festival2012

Brazil Drinks

Jazz Trio Cannes Cinema Club

My last full day of Cannes!

The time has flown by, and it has been a great five days. I deliberately left Monday free, hoping to grab a few hours and wander over to Antibes. Alas - the sky a blood red this morning (sailor's warning) and sure enough the rain falling relentlessly. No one can remember a Cannes this rainy - 4 consecutive days and no sunny weather forecast til Wednesday, long after I have left.

I thought I'd report how my casual meetings take place here in Film Land. For those of you not in Cannes, this is what you are missing:

Generally, you feel a tap on your shoulder, turn around and there is someone you haven't seen since Berlinale, or last year in Cannes. "Great to see you!" then, with great intensity "When did you get here?" then, "Wow the weather!" then, "When are you leaving?". It's generally in that order too. If you exchange business cards, the patter this year is: "Wow! I Really Love Your Business Card!" followed by: "If you aren't leaving til Tuesday, we should really hook up!". Then on to the next one.

Trivial as this may seem, us human beings love exchanging phatic conversation. It's how you add in those little bits of what you know about someone, and all important too. That is is in a truly spectacular setting with loads and loads of people having a great time, makes Cannes at the top of my "Must Attend" events.

My first meeting (10:30am) was with a festival representative. There are many such in Cannes, but only a handful of professional ones. It breaks my heart to see nieve newbies being conned by certain startup 'festival experts." It's one of the cons that filmmakers fall for.

I then went to see a couple other film sales agents who patiently went through their lists of new product, hoping that the titles would spark Raindance's interest - and many have. I now have a case full with over 150 DVD's and press kits.

With my last day racing by, and rain pouring down in buckets, I decided to abandon my stroll around the old town in favour of lunch followed by a tipple at the Brazilian drinks. Brazil has really upped their game at this year's Cannes, and the films and filmmakers pouring out of Brazil are as dynamic and as exciting as from anywhere.

Australian Jon Hewitt is another fab friend from many Raindance Film Festivals gone by and I ended up chatting to him for ages in the Marche with his producer Lissette. Jon is on feature number seven right now, and is a wonderful director. Jon is having a private party on Thursday, shamefully scheduled after I leave! Last year's private party was one of my Cannes 2011 highlights.

I was able to introduce Jon and Lissette to Zachary Miller, a Raindance regular since year one, and producer of one of last year's festival highlights: the award winning After Fall, Winter. Zachary has put his crew in a villa up the hill, and has scheduled his villa party on Tuesday - again when I am gone. I have got to get this better organised next year.

It was now approaching sunset, and by London standards had packed in another really successful days, but there were still 3 WOW factors about to spin me around.

The first was the IMDB.com dinner party up the hill in the Old Town - hosted by festival friend and ex BIFA juror and IMDB founder Col Needham. Col had a fascinating cross section of festival directors, journalists, producers, agents and new media experts including the Withoutabox.com team.
Idiotically I didn't take any pictures, but if you head over to the IMDB.com blog I am sure you can find some. Somehow it didn't seem appropriate to take pictures of a small intimate gathering of the net's film giant's inner circle.

The second WOW was the arrival into Cannes of Julian and Marion from our London office. They had driven down from Brussels With Maxime and FX of the Brussels office.

The third WOW was elevenfiftyfive's Cannes Cinema Club - a 1960's pastiche club filled with hundreds of film references, Stella Artois and one of the best and most entertaining Jazz trio's I have ever heard.