France, a land of movies

Cinema is  clearly dominated by the USA and the Hollywood productions. However, French cinema has tried to make a name for itself, France is one of the countries in which we can find the most cinema festivals in the world ! France hosted one the very first cinema festivals in the world (The first being "Mostra de Venise" which will be hosting it's 74^th edition in 2018).

The oldest and most important French cinema festival is the "Festival de Cannes". This festival should have known his first edition in 1939 and should have been hosted by Louis Lumière one of the inventors of the camera and should have shown the film The Wizard Of Oz by Victor Fleming but this edition was cancelled because of the start of the World War II. It was finally held from the 5^th September to the 20^th October 1946. The "Palme d'or "which is the ultimate reward you can obtain was only created in 1955 and rewarded for it's first time the director Delbert Mann for it's film "Marty ".

The second most important festival of cinema in France is Clermont-Ferrand's. This festival was created in 1982 and hosted it's 40^th edition in 2018. The whole festival takes place in "La jetée" and is welcomed by the House of Culture. This festival is reserved to short films : it is actually the most important short films festival in the world ! He proceeded to get over 161 000 entries in 2017 !

The festival of Annecy was created in 1960 by Pierre Barbin, André Martin and Michel Boschet. These three men attended the first edition of the "Festival de Cannes " and thought that the animation movies shown in the festival weren't working that much and then got the idea to create one that would specialize in animation movies in "Haute Savoie". This festival welcomes all types of animations from 3D to stop motion. It has as feature to do screening in vanilla rooms but also in the outside ! Annecy's festival has hosted world-first screening such Cars 3 and also very populars animation movies like Kirikou et la Sorcière.

Chalons-en-Champagne has it's own festival since 2013 called "War on Screen". It is organized and hosted by " la Comète" and the "Lycée Pierre Bayen". This festival was created just before the memorial of the World War II. War on Screen takes war for it's only theme, each film is more or less related to war. In this festival there is a competition for both long and short movies.

The French festivals of cinema have worldwide fame, and the films that are introduced in the festivals are also worldwide, due to all these events. France wishes to continue giving exposure to it's cinematographic knowledge to go compete against the American giants.

Original text : Louis Rouyer

English Tanslation : Hugo Roger