Culture of Cannes

Between Festivals and major events, Cannes lives to the beat of the arts year around, thanks to the many organizations contributing to its reputation and teaching. Cannes Municipal Music and Drama Conservatoire promote the awakening and introduction to music since the age of three years old for viola, violin and cello students and since five years old for those registered to musical awakening.

The main cultural event is the International Film Festival, which was first planned for 1939, cancelled because of the outbreak of war and then rescheduled for 1946. The festival gradually grew in size and importance, with the participation in the 1950s and 60s of Cocteau, Bardot, Truffaut and Goddard and the addition of the International Film Market, International Critics’ Week and Directors’ Fortnight. By the 1970s, the festival had become big business, as important for networking as for awarding the prizes, including the prestigious Palme d’Or, and increasingly presenting mainstream Hollywood films. Roman Polanski picked up the coveted prize in 2002, for his directorial return for The Pianist, a holocaust tale of a Polish pianist who escapes a Nazi death camp with the aid of a German officer.

For ticket reservation contact Palais des Festivals for reduced prices for groups. Tickets for general cultural performance and events in Cannes are available at the venue, online or from FNAC, 83 rue d’Antibes . The monthly French-only publication, Le Mois a Cannes, available from the Cannes Tourist Office, provides cultural listings. Listings are also available online .

Music: During the Musical Nights of Le Suquet, international orchestras perform in the Palais des Festivals, Esplanade Georges Pompidou, and chamber orchestras play on the steps of Notre Dame de l’Esperance in Le Suquet. Leading orchestras present during the festival, such as the Cannes Provence Alpes Cote d’Azur Regional Orchestra. Others perform throughout the year, most notably during the biennial International Classical Music Festival. Other principal venues include the Theatre Debussy, in the Palais des Festivals, and the Theatre Palais Croisette in the Hotel Noga Hilton, 50 boulevard de la Croisette. MIDEM (International Market for Records and Music Publishing) programmes jazz, classical and contemporary concerts in January.

Theatre: During the International Actors’ Performance Festival, small venues are used to stage humorous sketches, which can be enjoyed over a drink. Productions are often performed in the Espace Miramar, on the corner of La Croisette and rue Pasteur and the smaller theatre Alexandre III, 19 boulevard Alexandre III . Actors training at the prestigious theatre school, ERAC (Cannes’ Regional Actors’ School), put on regular productions.

Dance: The Ecole Superieure de Danse de Cannes Rosella Hightower, 5 rue de Colmar, prepares seven- to 18-year-olds for their Baccalaureat and a career in international ballet. In addition to regular performances, the biennial International Dance Festival, presided over by Rosella Hightower herself, comprises a mix of neo-classical, contemporary, minimalist and postmodern dance.

Film: Since the International Film Festival (website: www.festival-cannes.fr) is reserved for professionals only, the Cannes Festival Forum, in May, organises meetings and screenings for film fans. Young critics are targeted at numerous writing workshops during Cannes’ Cinematographic Meeting, in December. In Festival Panorama, ten feature films that have won awards in various international festivals compete. Films made in Cannes and the Riviera include Truth or Dare/In Bed with Madonna (1991) and the Cary Grant and Grace Kelly classic, To Catch a Thief (1955).

Cinemas in the city include Arcades, 77 rue Felix Faure ), Olympia, 16 rue de la Pompe , and Studio 13, 23 avenue du Dr Picaud . Salle Raimu, avenue de la Borde, shows original versions of art films.

Cultural events: Other than the International Film Festival, in May, an event that attracts the creme de la creme of the film fraternity, Cannes has a smattering of annual events, particularly over the summer season, which features the International Fireworks Festival, in July, a competition that draws 1.5 million spectators. The Musical Nights of Le Suquet takes place in mid-July in Le Suquet. The winter season includes the unfailingly good International Dance Festival in December.

Literary Notes
F Scott Fitzgerald is the most famous writer to glamorise the Riviera. The literary fruits of his frequent visits between 1924-29 created a myth of 1920s excess, best exemplified in his novels The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender is the Night (1934), in which he wrote: ‘Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo - began to glow through their camouflage, whispering of old kings come to dine or die, of rajahs tossing Buddha’s eyes to English ballerinas, of Russian princes turning the weeks into Baltic twilights in the lost caviar days.’