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from the Oh,-no-room-for-Netflix-huh?-Fine,-I'll-go-build-my-own-film-festival!-With-blackjack-and-hookers! dept.
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After a rule change disqualifying its films from competition, it won't screen anything.
Netflix won't be screening anything at Cannes this year, either in or out of competition. Despite debuting two titles last year, the first streaming provider to do so at the prestigious film festival, the backlash has been significant. The new rule banning any movie from competition that didn't have a theatrical run was a clear message: Streaming content creators weren't welcome.
"We want our films to be on fair ground with every other filmmaker," Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos told Variety. "There's a risk in us going in this way and having our films and filmmakers treated disrespectfully at the festival. They've set the tone. I don't think it would be good for us to be there."
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/11/netflix-will-not-go-to-cannes-after-all/
From TechInsider:For fans of famed filmmaker and actor Orson Welles, the news on Wednesday that Netflix would be pulling the movies it planned to show at this year's Cannes Film Festival — including the world premiere of Welles' infamous final movie[*] — followed the narrative of the legend's complicated career.
[...] Welles' daughter, Beatrice, is pleading that the streaming giant reconsider.
"I was very upset and troubled to read in the trade papers about the conflict with the Cannes Film Festival," Beatrice wrote in an email sent to Netflix head of content Ted Sarandos on Sunday, according to Vanity Fair. "I have to speak out for my father."
"I saw how the big production companies destroyed his life, his work, and in so doing a little bit of the man I loved so much," Beatrice continued. "I would so hate to see Netflix be yet another one of these companies."
[*] The movie is "The Other Side of the Wind"; see: Wikipedia and IMDb.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fluffeh on Friday April 13 2018, @01:31AM
There are a lot of different categories/prizes awarded during the festival. Given one of them is documentary - which is rather "un-artlike" by default, there is already an argument that the festival does not give these awards purely for art.
However, I am really surprised that the Cannes festival is indeed actually stuck with both feet in the mud so to speak, I would have thought given their bohemian predisposition, they wouldn't have cared where a film was shown to be entered. I mean there a is a whole section for short films - how many theatres are they shown in? This is clearly the Studios scared shitless of the "Streamers" and burying their head in the mud to go along with their feet.