Cannes Film Festival 20/05/2010

Live from Cannes

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Live from Cannes: the trainees on a daily basis.

* Sunday 16 May: Africa Special
Sunday 16 May was wholly given over to Africa, with the film Un homme qui crie (Shouting man) by Chad director Mahamat Saleh Haroun in competition. The entire team turned up for the soirée and met the lead actor Youssouf Djaoro. Nafissatou Diouf, journalist from RTS (Senegal), will be conducting an interview with the director on Monday for 70 TV channels across the continent.

* Thursday 13 May: Ascending the red-carpeted stairs
The team has made its mark on the Croisette, shooting non-stop at the hectic pace of news at Cannes: press screenings, conferences, photocalls, and stand-up reports. The journalists also tackled another festival must: filming a host of film industry workers and stars of the silver screen getting the red-carpet treatment prior to attending the 7.00 pm screenings. Salimata Nana, journalist for RTB (Burkina Faso) and Francesca Litton, journalist for ABS-CBN (Philippines) had the privilege of being included among the 75 media covering the “red carpet” for Mathieu Almaric’s Tour, and Wall Street II with Michael Douglas.

CFI: “24 hours after your red-carpet experience, what were your impressions? Did you encounter any difficulties handling this exercise?”
Salimata Nana: “I wasn’t expecting this, I thought it would be complicated, but it all went swimmingly. I watched stars going up the stairs; it was so exciting to see Eva Longoria from Desperate Housewives! I wondered whether it was actually happening.”
Francesca Litton: “There were loads of people, but we were well-placed. Cannes is nothing like the Golden Globes, it’s very strict, we can’t conduct interviews.”

* Wednesday 12 May: first subjects
Wednesday 12 May, from the CFI production apartment in Cannes, 10 journalists from TV channels in Armenia, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Senegal and the Philippines have experienced their first editorial conference. On the agenda: the cast from Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood ascending the red-carpeted stairs, the secrets of the most famous of red carpets, and three live studio programmes for Egyptian TV. Results: Five TV channels received news of the first day in Cannes and Egyptian TV broadcast three live programmes in three languages (French, English and Arabic) to its viewers.

Dora Abdel Razik, journalist for ERTU, gave us her first impressions.

CFI: “What difficulties have you encountered on this first day?
Dora Abdel Razik: “The festival opening really stressed me out, because I had not only to send a subject, but also deal with three studio programmes and find a guest capable of giving an overall vision of the festival, on the day when all the celebrities are busy with the red carpet. The pressure was really high, because the satellite slots had been booked, and that’s a lot of money for my TV channel. In spite of all the tension, I was delighted to handle this first live programme in French at 7h40 pm, the first achievement in a day that ended at 4.30 am!”