Thumbnails Special Edition: Cannes 2019

Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety. This special edition of Thumbnails spotlights coverage of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The photo of Roger seen above headlined the critic's conversation about Cannes with The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy in 2012.—The Editors

1. 

"The Cannes Film Festival—With Roger Ebert As Your Tour Guide": The Wall Street Journal's Rico Gagliano reflects on the late critic's "timeless itinerary." 

“The most evocative travelogue I’ve ever read was written by a guy who spent much of his life sitting very still in dark rooms. The man was the late film critic Roger Ebert. The book is Two Weeks in the Midday Sun, a catalog of his adventures at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Though he makes plenty of pit stops to interview movie stars, it’s ultimately a love letter to the city of Cannes, and the movie gala that made it famous. ‘I have always felt a little out of place at these glamorous international events,’ Ebert humbly claims on page five. It’s the only sentence in the book that rings false. The critic attended Cannes religiously for decades, and ‘Midday Sun’ is clearly the work of a man in his element— equally content speeding along the French Riviera on a movie mogul’s yacht, or sipping coffee under a cafe awning in a Gallic rainstorm. Ebert guides us warmly through a world he knows well, embracing joys of any brow: high, low or middle. Now, three decades later, does Cannes still yield those joys? To find out, last May I attended the festival for the first time. Instead of a guide book, I packed my copy of ‘Midday Sun.’”

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"In Memory of Roger Ebert—10 Years at Cannes, 10 Books to Giveaway": Alex Billington of FirstShowing.net explains why he has chosen to give away ten copies of Two Weeks in the Midday Sun.

“It's kind of eerie how his writing perfectly captures the experience of being here. How much it sounds like he's sitting right next to me reading this aloud today, talking about what he's about to go see this year. It's also eerie how much is the exact same, how much the festival operates similarly to what he experienced there 32 years ago. But I guess that's part of the magic. That's exactly what makes Cannes such a unique, unforgettable, extraordinary place. That's part of why it has such an iconic legacy, why there's so much history here. And why it still has the most film critics in the entire world attending every year, no matter the line-up, no matter the changes they make. It's Cannes! It's the South of France! It's cinema heaven! And there's nowhere I'd rather be. And I feel truly lucky and honored to be in the same place where Roger Ebert used to return to year after year, sit in the same screening rooms he used to frequent. And hopefully, if we're lucky as well, we'll have that "spine-tingling" experience when a film leaves us floored. Only time will tell…”

3.

"Chicago Program Gives High School Girls Lessons in Documentary Filmmaking": Variety's Tom McLean reports from Cannes about the DePaul/CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) Documentary Filmmaking Program.

“The program’s founders know that access to moviemaking and equipment — and the chance to put them into action — can be a life-changing experience. Just ask Zana Carter, who a few summers ago was a high school student with a love of writing and the films of Spike Lee and a desire to see more stories on screen that reflected her life as a resident of Chicago public housing. ‘Those things drove me into filmmaking,’ says Carter. ‘Being part of an African American community with stories not being shared that should be acknowledged’ was important. Carter helped make the bullying documentary ‘What If I Told You’ as part of the DePaul/CHA program. She’s now a junior at DePaul studying filmmaking, with a focus on cinematography. That kind of outcome is what earned the program the support of Chaz Ebert, widow of legendary film critic Roger Ebert, who sponsors a premiere night for the films and seeks post-program opportunities both for the shorts and for the students. ‘The girls in the DePaul/CHA program have voices and viewpoints that you don’t see or hear a lot of in the larger film community,’ says Ebert, a Housing Authority resident in her youth. ‘I think these are voices that are very important.’”