Paris (AFP)
The 74th edition of the Cannes film festival, whose preparations "are in full swing" for July despite the pandemic, has a president of the jury, the American filmmaker Spike Lee, the first black personality to occupy the function.
Spike Lee was due to chair the jury last year, but the Covid prevented the festival from being held.
"Faithful to his commitments", the filmmaker will assume this function during the festival which is to take place in early summer (July 6 to 17), instead of May, the organizers announced.
"The preparations are in full swing, with many films viewed by the selection committee," he said, giving an appointment "at the beginning of June" for the announcement of the Official Selection and the composition of the rest of the jury, which will have to designate the successor of "Parasite" of the South Korean Bong Joon-ho, Palme d'or 2019.
This 74th edition is expected: if sanitary conditions allow it to be held on the scheduled dates, it will be the most important world cinema meeting for more than a year.
Most of the other major festivals have been forced to cancel or have been held online.
- "Passion for cinema" -
The appointment of Spike Lee, leading filmmaker of the black cause, author of both activist and mainstream films, confirms, after last year's announcement, the message sent by the prestigious festival.
"For 30 years, the indefatigable Spike Lee translates with acuity the questions of his time, in a resolutely contemporary form which never neglects the lightness and the entertainment", underlined the organizers.
"We could not have hoped for a more powerful personality to question our times so turned upside down", declared the president of the festival, Pierre Lescure.
"His enthusiasm and his passion for cinema give us increased energy to prepare for the great festival that everyone is waiting for", added the general delegate Thierry Frémaux.
If Cannes has already welcomed black-American artists such as filmmaker Ava DuVernay in 2018 and actor Will Smith in 2017 to its jury, this is a first for its president.
However, the question of racial diversity is a burning one for the world of the 7th art.
In Hollywood, the Oscar nominations on Monday seemed to mark a wake-up call, with nine "non-white" performers vying in the four actor categories.
- Regular at the Croisette -
Spike Lee, also actor in many of his films and producer, who will be 64 years old on Saturday, will he put his activist paw?
Probably, so much his films reflect his commitment, from "Malcolm X" to "Da 5 Bloods", released in 2020 on Netflix, which follows four black American veterans in Vietnam.
In 2018, this regular at the Croisette, who presented a total of seven of his films there, made his entry into the Palais des Festivals by showing his "love" and "hate" tattoos engraved on his hands, like Robert Mitchum in "La night of the hunter "(1955).
He then received the Grand Prize for "BlackkKlansman", the true story of a black infiltrator in the Ku Klux Klan, an anti-racist and anti-Trump pamphlet, which will earn him his first Oscar in competition, after an Oscar of honor in 2015.
And the artist with the look of an eternal teenager has already taken advantage of the Cannes platform to proclaim his convictions, reproaching Clint Eastwood for not having included black soldiers in his two films on the battle of Iwo Jima or criticizing the " Django Unchained "by Quentin Tarantino recalling that" American slavery was not a spaghetti western by Sergio Leone. It was a holocaust ".
Very enthusiastic, Spike Lee said he was impatient to join Cannes, in a conversation with Thierry Frémaux, broadcast by the festival: "It will be magnificent," he said, recalling that he had made his "entry into the festival. the cinema ", in 1986, with her first film" Nola Darling does as she pleases "(Directors' Fortnight).
Will follow "Do The Right Thing" (1989), evoking the racial tensions in Brooklyn, then "Jungle Fever" (1991), both in competition, "Girl 6" in 1996 out of competition, "Summer of Sam" in 1999 at the Directors' Fortnight and "Ten Minutes Older" in 2002 at Un Certain Regard.
© 2021 AFP