A recap by Ashraf Ghori

[Continued from Part 1]

So now we reached the famous French city of Cannes. A city by the sea with winding roads, stepped buildings and magnificent views. As we stepped out of the bus on the 12th of May, our luggage was quite a sight with almost three bags a person. The taxi guys waiting near the bus station had quite an attitude.  Finally someone was gracious enough to offer us a taxi ride to the ‘La Bocca’ area to our hotel Villa Maupassant.

We reached the hotel only to find out that there was no booking under our name. We were all too anxious to provide the proofs of our payment through booking.com but that didn’t seem to help much. Thoughts of us spending the next 2 weeks on the streets or under the bridges were racing through our heads. After a nerve wracking hour the nice lady at the reception, Pascale, figured out it was a mistake on their part with the booking under a wrong name. And with a major sigh of relief, we were finally in.

Although we were really tired from all the traveling, but we hadn’t a moment to waste. We had to report at the Palais De Festivals before 6PM to complete our accreditation and collect our badges, without which we wouldn’t be able to do anything. A short shuttle ride from the hotel, and we were there. Our first foray into the Palais saw many people rushing around all over the place, some in tuxedos and gowns and the others in casuals. The Palais was a large building resembling a theatre surrounded by a marina & beach on one side and La Croisette on the other.

There was no shortage of bouncers at the Palais. There were men and women in smart light grey suits, Cannes personnel, who were stopping people from entering various venues and guiding them to other places. No matter where we went we had go past bouncers and security checks. There was even a bouncer in front of the Mc Donald’s opposite the Palais. We quickly  got used to this though, at a high profile event with stars and film industry professionals from the world over, this was to be expected.

Collecting our badges was a reasonably quick process considering that there were hundreds of people lined up for the same. Our kit included a neat blue Festival De Cannes bag with various festival catalogues and maps to the venues. I was relieved to see we could communicate in English with most people there, which was hardly the case when I visited France 18 years ago. We also got tickets for the world premiere of Ridley Scott’s ‘Robin Hood’ the opening night movie of the Festival.

A little detail we noticed on the ticket was the dress code. Strictly Tuxedo. It was now after 7 PM, and the shops in Cannes close promptly at 6 PM. We weren’t prepared to be at the Red Carpet at the Grand Theatre Lumiere dressed in tuxedos, but we didn’t want to miss this extremely rare opportunity. Something had to be done fast. Monoprix was probably the only shop in the area which was open and luckily we found our bow ties and shirts. While we were walking the red carpet we didn’t waste this ‘twitpic’ moment, and shot a photo across twitter to our friends online who were all too eager to know what was going on.

The Grand Theatre Lumiere was the biggest theatre I had ever seen. It was a magnificent structure which could house over 2000 people in one screening. Looking down from the balcony, the rows appeared as though never-ending. The seating was comfortable but the leg room was just lower than the comfort level which did get annoying for long movies. The movie began with the iconic Cannes Palm Logo atop floating steps with a red carpet. After a long and tiring day, and even after trying to keep our eyes open, we dozed off during the screening.

The following day we recouped our energies and reached the Palais in the early afternoon. I was scheduled to attend a lecture for first time visitors to Cannes. Unfortunately no one seemed to know exactly where this was happening and I ended up missing most of this session.

The Short Film Corner / Court Metrage was arguably the most happening venue at CFF. There was a great deal of energy in this place with filmmakers and movie buffs alike mingling to promote their films or to catch the screenings of the Court Metrage fare. Hundreds of filmmakers from around the world selected for the SFC had their films for display. Throughout the festival, this was the place we would spend most of our time promoting Levity. The SFC had a viewing section where registered festival guests or ‘Marche’ / Market badge holders could log in and watch the SFC films in personal viewing booths. Films selected for SFC were also entitled to one screening in a theatre. We could book in the time for our screening based on the availability of the cinema.

The Official screening of “LEVITY - Xero Error Minus1″ at Festival De Cannes was scheduled for Saturday 22nd May 2010 - Screen 2 at 12:00

We occasionally visited the Abu Dhabi Pavilion which was located in the International Pavilions area behind the Palais. We were also invited to attend the Abu Dhabi Pavilion Party on the 14th of May, which was a grand affair on the beach at the La Croisette. We had the pleasure of meeting up with UAE filmmakers Majid al-Ansari, Ali Mostafa, Nawaf Al Janahi among others and the people behind the Abu Dhabi Film Commission.

How did our film ‘Levity - Xero Error Minus1′ fare with the Cannes crowd?
Find out in the conclusion of this three part Cannes special report.