The John Dunning Best First Feature Award is a special Canadian film award, presented by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the year's best feature film by a first-time film director. Under the earlier names Claude Jutra Award and Canadian Screen Award for Best First Feature , the award has been presented since the 14th Genie Awards in 1993.
51-477: Formerly a juried prize whose winner was announced in advance of the ceremony, the award is now presented as a conventional category with a full shortlist of nominees. To date six films, The Confessional (Le Confessionnal) , Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner , Away from Her , A Colony (Une colonie) , Beans and Scarborough , have won both the Best First Feature and Best Picture awards in
102-448: A Cannes award. Jurors are chosen from a wide range of international artists, based on their body of work and respect from their peers. The appointment of the president of the jury is made following several annual management proposals made in the fall and submitted to the festival's board of directors for validation. The jury meets annually at the historic Villa Domergue to select the winners. The most prestigious award given at Cannes
153-408: A dedicated venue for the event. Hollywood stars of the moment like Gary Cooper , Cary Grant , Tyrone Power , Douglas Fairbanks Jr. , Marlene Dietrich , Mae West , Norma Shearer , Paul Muni , James Cagney , Spencer Tracy , and George Raft arrived thanks to an Ocean liner chartered by MGM ( Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ). On 31 August, the opening night gala took place with the private screening of
204-414: A president, after his last term, becomes the honorary president of the festival. The general delegate is responsible for the coordination of the events. When Gilles Jacob passed from general delegate to the position of the president, in 2001, two new positions were created to take over his former post, the general director to oversee the smooth running of the event, and the artistic director, responsible for
255-603: A regular contest had been established before the time when Phrynichus is first mentioned ...." Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Film Festival ( / k æ n / ; French: Festival de Cannes , [fɛstival də kan] ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ( Festival international du film ), is an annual film festival held in Cannes , France, which previews new films of all genres, including documentaries , from all around
306-586: A subjective set of criteria, dependent upon the nature of the competition or the judges themselves. For example, in a juried competition where participants compete against each other for a monetary prize, for inclusion in a show or publication, or for representation by a gallery, the work presented is judged by one or more persons, often experts, for such prize, inclusion, or representation. Juried competitions also include contests in film (often at film festivals ), television, new media . Britain's Got Talent and American Idol are both juried competitions, as
357-672: Is quoted to have said: "The Cannes Festival should be a no man's land in which politics has no place. It should be a simple meeting between friends." In 1962, the International Critics' Week was born, created by the French Union of Film Critics as the first parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival. Its goal was to showcase first and second works by directors from all over the world, not succumbing to commercial tendencies. In 1965 Olivia de Havilland
408-612: Is the Palme d'Or ("Golden Palm") for the best film. The festival has become an important showcase for European films . Jill Forbes and Sarah Street argue in European Cinema: An Introduction ( ISBN 0333752104 ), that Cannes "became...extremely important for critical and commercial interests and for European attempts to sell films on the basis of their artistic quality" (page 20). Forbes and Street also point out that, along with other festivals such as
459-584: Is the Disposable Film Festival . Most notable film festivals, such as Cannes , Berlin , Venice , Sundance and Toronto , have prizes awarded by a competition jury. In very early juried competitions in Greece, under Aeschylus and his successors, theatrical contests "advanced to a high degree of importance" and were "placed under the superintendence of" (juried by) "the magistracy". The Greek god Agôn personifies solemn contests. During
510-473: Is usually used to describe creative contests: artistic and literary competitions rather than sports tournaments or academic and scholarship competitions, although such competitions have similarities. Generally, juried competitions are contests that individuals actively enter to compete for prizes, rather than events in which the competitors are passively nominated by others, such as the Academy Awards or
561-523: The #MeToo movement that arose out of the Harvey Weinstein scandal , in 2018, Cannes Film Festival officials announced the creation of a telephone hotline during the festival in which victims could report incidents of sexual harassment and other crimes. The hotline is in collaboration with the French government. General Delegate Thierry Frémaux reportedly "banned" selfies on the red carpet of
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#1732781042764612-425: The 7th Canadian Screen Awards in 2019. Juried (competition) A juried competition is a competition in which participants' work is judged by a person or panel of persons convened specifically to judge the participants' efforts. The jury may be referred to as a competition jury or awards jury , and usually presents awards based on specific criteria for the competition. The phrase "juried competition"
663-573: The Caméra d'Or award, for the best first film of any of the main events, and the Un Certain Regard section, for the non-competitive categories. Other changes were the decrease of length of the festival down to thirteen days, thus reducing the number of selected films; also, until that point the Jury was composed by Film Academics, and Jacob started to introduce celebrities and professionals from
714-692: The Canadian Screen Award for Best First Feature . In the same year the John Dunning Discovery Award , named in memory of film producer John Dunning , was introduced to honour microbudget films. Initially it was a separate award from the Best First Feature category, with the two awards presented alongside each other to different films, until the two awards were merged under the John Dunning Best First Feature Award name beginning with
765-813: The Middle Ages in 1441, a public poetry competition called the Certame Coronario was held in Florence with the intention of proving that the spoken Italian language was not inferior to Latin. More recently, but before the advent of the Internet , national and international juried competitions were (and still are) advertised in trade publications , with jurists selected from among the artistic or literary elite. Before digitized images became widely available, competitions of visual works accepted primarily photographic slides from competitors to represent
816-588: The Second World War . The French government ordered a general mobilization and this prevented the festival from continuing so it was finally cancelled. In 1946, the festival was relaunched and from 20 September to 5 October 1946, twenty-one countries presented their films at the First Cannes International Film Festival , which took place at the former Casino of Cannes. In 1947, amid serious problems of efficiency,
867-475: The Turner Prize . The Guggenheim Fellowship is an example of an award which straddles the line between a scholarship contest and a juried art competition. The phrase 'juried competition' is also applied to non-fine-arts contests which yet encompass distinctively creative endeavors: a cook-off is one such contest. A juried competition judges entries either by the competition's stated rubric , or by
918-578: The Venice Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival , Cannes offers an opportunity to determine a particular country's image of its cinema and generally foster the notion that European cinema is "art" cinema. Additionally, given massive media exposure, the non-public festival is attended by many stars and is a popular venue for film producers to launch their new films and to attempt to sell their works to
969-552: The American film The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara and directed by William Dieterle . The next day, on 1 September, German troops invaded Poland . As a result, the festival was postponed for 10 days and it would be resumed if the circumstances allowed it. However, the situation only worsened and on 3 September, France and the United Kingdom declared war against Germany, sparking
1020-411: The Cannes Film Festival. These include "Heelgate" in which numerous female attendees of a red carpet premiere were stopped from entering in 2015 for wearing flat soled shoes instead of high heels . The incident caused numerous female celebrities to wear flat soled shoes or no shoes at all to other red carpet premieres in a show of solidarity and protest. As a result of the past sexual controversies and
1071-526: The February 2016 publication of Yves Lever 's biography of Jutra, which contained allegations that Jutra had sexually abused underage children during his lifetime, the Academy announced that it was removing Jutra's name from the award. Québec Cinéma also removed Jutra's name from its Prix Jutra ceremonies on the same day. Beginning with the 4th Canadian Screen Awards in 2016, the award was presented as
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#17327810427641122-783: The Festival in Buenos Aires, as La Semana de Cine del Festival de Cannes , and in 2010, he created the Cannes Court Métrage for the Short Film competition. On 20 March 2020, organizers announced the postponement of the Cannes Film Festival 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic ; the festival was later cancelled outright. Spike Lee, director of Do the Right Thing and BlacKkKlansman , had been chosen to lead
1173-478: The Festival. In his term, the Festival started including films from more countries, like Philippines, China, Cuba, Australia, India, New Zealand and Argentina. In 1987, for the first time of the Festival, a red carpet was placed at the entrance of the Palais. In 1989, during the first Cinéma & liberté forum, hundred directors from many countries signed a declaration "against all forms of censorship still existing in
1224-467: The French desire to compete with the Venice Film Festival , which at the time was the only international film festival and had shown a lack of impartiality with its fascist bias during those years. The political interference seemed evident in the 1937 edition when Benito Mussolini meddled to ensure that French pacifist film La Grande Illusion would not win. The last straw was in the 1938 event when Mussolini and Adolf Hitler respectively overruled
1275-575: The Internet also saw service firms appear offering organizational tools for juried competitions allowing for such conveniences as online storage and access of digital images. Juried competitions also benefit from the immediacy of the Internet in that competitions listings are aggregated by some sites making such listings more widely accessible than when they were enumerated primarily in trade publications. Some juried competitions in art and literature exist entirely online, or both online and in print. "...
1326-495: The Years of Fire marking this turn. In some cases, these changes helped directors like Andrei Tarkovsky overcome problems of censorship in their own country. Also, until that time, the different countries chose the films that would represent them in the festival. Yet, in 1972, Bessy created a committee to select French films, and another for foreign films. In 1978, Gilles Jacob assumed the position of General Delegate, introducing
1377-745: The best Hollywood novels of all time by Entertainment Weekly . Iain Johnstone 's Cannes: The Novel is a dystopian tale about terrorists holding the festival hostage. Paulo Coelho 's The Winner Stands Alone is also set at the Cannes Film Festival. The culture and history of the festival has been covered in a number of non-fiction books. The festival has been used as the backdrop and setting of several films, including The Last Horror Film (1982), La cité de la peur (1994), Festival in Cannes (2001), Femme Fatale (2002) and Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007); some of these were shot on location at
1428-412: The distributors who come from all over the globe. Though most of the media attention the festival receives is journalistic in nature, the festival has been explored from the standpoint of fiction by novelists over the years. Michael Grothaus ' Epiphany Jones is a social satire about the festival and film industry and explores sex trafficking that occurs during the festival. The book was named one of
1479-713: The eviction of the then President of the Cinémathèque Française . The filmmakers achieved the reinstatement of the President, and they founded the Film Directors' Society (SRF) that same year. In 1969 the SRF, led by Pierre-Henri Deleau created the Directors' Fortnight ( Quinzaine des Réalisateurs ), a new non-competitive section that programs a selection of films from around the world, distinguished by
1530-431: The fact that the regulations at that time prohibited awarding a documentary. Outraged by the decision and as a measure of protest, the French, British, and American jury members decided to withdraw from the festival with the intention of not returning. This snub encouraged the French to found a free festival. Thus, on 31 May 1939, the city of Cannes was finally selected as the location for the festival over Biarritz and
1581-420: The festival a commercial character and facilitating exchanges between sellers and buyers in the film industry. Today it has become the first international platform for film commerce. Still, in the 1950s, some outstanding films, like Night and Fog in 1956 and Hiroshima, My Love in 1959 were excluded from the competition for diplomatic concerns. Jean Cocteau , three times president of the jury in those years,
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1632-518: The festival in 2015. In 2017, along with the 70th anniversary events of the Festival, the issue of changing the rules on theatrical screening caused controversy. In 2018, the enforcement of theatrical screening in France resulted in Netflix withdrawing their films from the festival. The president of the festival, who represents the festival in front of financial partners, the public authorities and
1683-458: The festival was held as the "Festival du film de Cannes", where films from sixteen countries were presented. The festival was not held in 1948 and 1950 due to budgetary problems. In 1949, the Palais des Festivals was expressly constructed for the occasion on the seafront promenade of La Croisette , although its inaugural roof, while still unfinished, blew off during a storm. In 1951, the festival
1734-412: The festival's popularity over critically-acclaimed films and Academy Award considerations, its reputation gained notoriety for introducing transgressive films—most notably each films behind New French Extremity as well as films of Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier —generated harsh criticism and controversy, extensive theatrical screening, lack of diversity, protests and various scandals continued over
1785-470: The film industry. In 1983, a new, much bigger Palais des Festivals et des Congrès was built to host the festival, while the Directors' Fortnight remained in the old building. The new building was nicknamed "The Bunker", provoking much criticism, especially since it was hardly finished at the event and several technical problems occurred. In 1984 Pierre Viot replaced Robert Favre Le Bret as President of
1836-505: The funding of their films. Gilles Jacob was appointed Honorary President in 2000, and in 2002, the Festival officially adopted the name Festival de Cannes . During the 2000s, the Festival started focusing more on the technological advances taking place in the film world, especially the digital techniques. In 2004, the restored historical films of the Festival were presented as Cannes Classics , which included documentaries. In 2007, Thierry Frémaux became General Delegate. In 2009, he extended
1887-498: The independent judgment displayed in the choice of films. During the 1970s, important changes occurred in the Festival. In 1972, Robert Favre Le Bret was named the new president, and Maurice Bessy the General Delegate. He introduced important changes in the selection of the participating films, welcoming new techniques, and relieving the selection from diplomatic pressures, with films like MASH , and later Chronicle of
1938-462: The jury panel. In 2019, the jury panel had been led by Alejandro González Iñárritu , director of Birdman . Lee was later invited to head the jury of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival , held in July of that year. In 2022, the festival denied press accreditation to Russian journalists associated with outlets who are not opposed to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war . On the opening night of the festival,
1989-791: The jury's decision in order to award the Coppa Mussolini (Mussolini Cup) for the Best Film to Italian war film Luciano Serra, Pilot , produced under the supervision of Mussolini's son, and the Coppa Mussolini for the Best Foreign Film to Olympia , a German documentary film about the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics produced in association with the Nazi Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda despite
2040-485: The media, is elected by the board of directors of the festival, officially named the "French Association of the Film Festival". The board is composed of authorities of the world of cinema, as well as of public authorities which subsidize the event. The president has a renewable 3-year mandate and appoints the members of his team, including the general delegate, with the approval of the board of directors. Sometimes
2091-427: The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky , made a video appearance where he talked about the war and the role of cinema in it. Iris Knobloch was elected the first woman president of the festival in the same year, succeeding the co-founder and former head of French pay-TV operator Canal+ , Pierre Lescure , who had served since 2014. In recent years, a number of gender and sexual controversies have surrounded
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2142-582: The recognition of original films and daring filmmakers. In 1954, the Special Jury Prize was awarded for the first time. In 1955, the Palme d'Or was created, replacing the Grand Prix du Festival which had been given until that year. In 1957, Dolores del Río was the first female member of the jury for the official selection. In 1959, the Marché du Film (Film Market) was founded, giving
2193-548: The same year; the directors of Le Confessionnal , Atanarjuat , Away from Her and Scarborough also won the award for Best Director for the same films. The award was originally named in memory of Claude Jutra , a Canadian film director who died in 1986. Formerly part of the Genie Awards ceremonies, the Claude Jutra Award was transitioned to be part of the new Canadian Screen Awards in 2013. Following
2244-451: The selection of films. However, in 2007, the artistic director Thierry Frémaux , became again the general delegate of the Festival. The general secretary is responsible for the reception of works and other practical matters. The Cannes Film Festival is organised in various sections: Prior to the beginning of each event, the festival's board of directors appoints the juries who hold sole responsibility for choosing which films will receive
2295-404: The town hall along with the French government signed the International Film Festival's official birth certificate with the name of Le Festival International du Film . The reason for deciding Cannes was because of its touristic appeal as a French Riviera resort town and also because the city hall offered to increase the municipality's financial participation, including the commitment of building
2346-603: The work entered because of the cost-prohibitive nature of sending and receiving whole artworks. After judging, only the selected works were sent on for public viewing if the competition included such a venue for the selected works. Written works such as poetry and prose, being less bulky, were entered in competitions via post and received in their original format. Since the advent of the Internet, many competitions for visual works began accepting entries in digital form as well as slide form, while literary competitions began to accept works submitted online as well as by post. The growth of
2397-529: The world". In 1998, Gilles Jacob created the last section of the Official Selection: la Cinéfondation , aiming to support the creation of works of cinema in the world and to contribute to the entry of the new scenario writers in the circle of the celebrities. The Cinéfondation was completed in 2000 with La Résidence , where young directors could refine their writing and screenplays, and in 2005, L'Atelier , which helps twenty directors per year with
2448-585: The world. Founded in 1946, the invitation-only festival is held annually (usually in May) at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès . The festival was formally accredited by the FIAPF in 1951. Cannes is one of the "Big Three" major European film festivals, alongside Venice and Berlin , as well as one of the "Big Five" major international film festivals, alongside Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance . Despite
2499-612: The years to be one of the most polarizing. The Cannes Film Festival has its origins in 1938 when Jean Zay , the French Minister of National Education , on the proposal of high-ranking official and historian Philippe Erlanger and film journalist Robert Favre Le Bret decided to set up an international cinematographic festival. They found the support of the Americans and the British. Its creation can be largely attributed to
2550-533: Was moved to spring to avoid direct competition with the Venice Festival which was held in autumn. During the early 1950s, the festival attracted much tourism and press attention, with showbiz scandals and high-profile personalities' love affairs. At the same time, the artistic aspect of the festival started developing. Because of controversies over the selection of films, the Critics' Prize was created for
2601-480: Was named the first female president of the jury, while the next year Sophia Loren became president. The 1968 festival was halted on 19 May. Some directors, such as Carlos Saura and Miloš Forman , had withdrawn their films from the competition. On 18 May filmmaker Louis Malle along with a group of directors took over the large room of the Palais and interrupted the projections in solidarity with students and labour on strike throughout France , and in protest to
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