Palme d'Or awarded to Apocalypse Now at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival

The Palme d'Or (English: Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and is presented to the director of the best feature film of the official competition.^[1] It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.^[2] From 1964 to 1974, it was replaced once again, by the Grand Prix du Festival.^[3]

History[link]

The Commune of Cannes coat of arms

Through 1954, the Jury of the Festival de Cannes awarded a "Grand Prix of the International Film Festival", with a new design each year from a contemporary artist. At the end of 1954, the Festival's Board of Directors invited several jewellers to submit designs for a palm, in tribute to the coat of arms of the City of Cannes.^[4] The original design by the jeweller Lucienne Lazon had the bevelled lower extremity of the stalk forming a heart, and the pedestal a sculpture in terracotta by the artist Sébastien.

In 1955, the first Palme d'Or was awarded to Delbert Mann for Marty, and it remained the highest award until 1964, when copyright issues with the Palme led the Festival to return to the Grand Prix. In 1975 the Palme d'Or was reintroduced and has since remained the symbol of the Cannes Film Festival, awarded every year to the director of the Best Feature Film of the Official Competition, and presented in a case of pure red Morocco leather lined with white suede.

Since its reintroduction, the prize has been redesigned several times. At the beginning of the 1980s, the rounded shape of the pedestal, bearing the palm, gradually transformed to become pyramidal in 1984. In 1992, Thierry de Bourqueney redesigned the Palme and its pedestal in hand-cut crystal. The current design from 1997 is by Caroline Scheufele at Chopard. A single piece of cut crystal forms a cushion for the 24-carat gold palm, which is hand cast into a wax mould and presented in a case of blue Morocco leather.^[5]

Award winners[link]

Year	Film	Director	Nationality of Director (at time of film's release)
1939	Union Pacific[6]	Cecil B. DeMille	United States*
1946	The Turning Point (Великий перелом / Velikij perelom)	Fridrikh Ermler	Soviet Union*
	Men Without Wings (Muži bez křídel)	František Čáp	Czechoslovakia*
	The Last Chance (Die Letzte Chance)	Leopold Lindtberg	Austria*
	Iris and the Lieutenant (Iris och löjtnantshjärta)	Alf Sjöberg	Sweden*
	Portrait of Maria (María Candelaria (Xochimilco))	Emilio Fernández	Mexico*
	Rome, Open City (Roma, città aperta)	Roberto Rossellini	Italy*
	Neecha Nagar (नीचा नगर)	Chetan Anand	India*
	Brief Encounter	David Lean	United Kingdom*
	La symphonie pastorale	Jean Delannoy	France*
	The Lost Weekend	Billy Wilder	United States
	The Red Meadows (De røde enge)	Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen Jr.	Denmark*
	Girl No. 217 (Человек № 217 / Čelovek № 217)	Mikhail Romm	Soviet Union*
1949	The Third Man	Carol Reed	United Kingdom
1951	Miss Julie (Fröken Julie)	Alf Sjöberg	Sweden
	Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano)	Vittorio De Sica	Italy
1952	The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice	Orson Welles	United States
	Two Cents Worth of Hope (Due soldi di speranza)	Renato Castellani	Italy
1953	The Wages of Fear (Le salaire de la peur)	Henri-Georges Clouzot	France
1954	Gate of Hell (地獄門 / Jigokumon)	Teinosuke Kinugasa	Japan*
1955	Marty	Delbert Mann	United States
1956	The Silent World (Le monde du silence)	Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle	France
1957	Friendly Persuasion	William Wyler	United States
1958	The Cranes Are Flying (Летят журавли / Letât žuravli)	Mikhail Kalatozov	Soviet Union
1959	Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro)	Marcel Camus	France
1960	La Dolce Vita	Federico Fellini	Italy
1961	The Long Absence (Une aussi longue absence)	Henri Colpi	France
	Viridiana	Luis Buñuel	Mexico
1962	O Pagador de Promessas	Anselmo Duarte	Brazil*
1963	The Leopard (Il gattopardo)	Luchino Visconti	Italy
1964	The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les parapluies de Cherbourg)	Jacques Demy	France
1965	The Knack …and How to Get It	Richard Lester	United Kingdom
1966	A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme)	Claude Lelouch	France
	The Birds, the Bees and the Italians (Signore e signori)	Pietro Germi	Italy
1967	Blow-Up	Michelangelo Antonioni	Italy
1969	if....	Lindsay Anderson	United Kingdom
1970	MASH	Robert Altman	United States
1971	The Go-Between	Joseph Losey	United Kingdom
1972	The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La classe operaia va in paradiso)	Elio Petri	Italy
	The Mattei Affair (Il caso Mattei)	Francesco Rosi	Italy
1973	The Hireling	Alan Bridges	United Kingdom
	Scarecrow	Jerry Schatzberg	United States
1974	The Conversation	Francis Ford Coppola	United States
1975	Chronicle of the Years of Fire (Chronique des années de braise)	Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina	Algeria*
1976	Taxi Driver	Martin Scorsese	United States
1977	Padre Padrone	Paolo and Vittorio Taviani	Italy
1978	The Tree of Wooden Clogs (L'albero degli zoccoli)	Ermanno Olmi	Italy
1979	Apocalypse Now	Francis Ford Coppola	United States
	The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel)	Volker Schlöndorff	West Germany*
1980	All That Jazz	Bob Fosse	United States
	Kagemusha (影武者)	Akira Kurosawa	Japan
1981	Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza)	Andrzej Wajda	Poland*
1982	Missing	Costa-Gavras	United States
	The Way (Yol)	Yılmaz Güney and Şerif Gören	Turkey*
1983	The Ballad of Narayama (楢山節考 / Narayama bushikō)	Shohei Imamura	Japan
1984	Paris, Texas §	Wim Wenders	West Germany
1985	When Father Was Away on Business (Otac na službenom putu) §	Emir Kusturica	Yugoslavia*
1986	The Mission	Roland Joffé	United Kingdom
1987	Under the Sun of Satan (Sous le soleil de Satan) §	Maurice Pialat	France
1988	Pelle the Conqueror (Pelle erobreren)	Bille August	Denmark /  Sweden
1989	Sex, Lies, and Videotape	Steven Soderbergh	United States
1990	Wild at Heart	David Lynch	United States
1991	Barton Fink §	Coen brothers	United States
1992	The Best Intentions (Den goda viljan)	Bille August	Denmark /  Sweden
1993	Farewell My Concubine (霸王別姬 / Bàwáng bié jī)	Chen Kaige	China*
	The Piano	Jane Campion	Australia* /  New Zealand*
1994	Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino	United States
1995	Underground (Подземље / Podzemlje)	Emir Kusturica	Yugoslavia*
1996	Secrets & Lies	Mike Leigh	United Kingdom
1997	Taste of Cherry (طعم گيلاس / Ta'm-e gīlās)	Abbas Kiarostami	Iran*
	The Eel (うなぎ / Unagi)	Shohei Imamura	Japan
1998	Eternity and a Day (Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα / Mia aio̱nióti̱ta kai mia méra) §	Theo Angelopoulos	Greece*
1999	Rosetta §	Dardenne brothers	Belgium*
2000	Dancer in the Dark	Lars von Trier	Denmark
2001	The Son's Room (La stanza del figlio)	Nanni Moretti	Italy
2002	The Pianist (Pianista)	Roman Polanski	France /  Poland
2003	Elephant	Gus Van Sant	United States
2004	Fahrenheit 9/11	Michael Moore	United States
2005	L'enfant (The Child)	Dardenne brothers	Belgium
2006	The Wind That Shakes the Barley §	Ken Loach	United Kingdom /  Ireland*
2007	4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile)	Cristian Mungiu	Romania*
2008	The Class (Entre les murs) §	Laurent Cantet	France
2009	The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte)	Michael Haneke	Austria /  Germany
2010	Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ / Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat)	Apichatpong Weerasethakul	Thailand*
2011	The Tree of Life	Terrence Malick	United States
2012	Love (Amour)	Michael Haneke	Austria /  France

* _{denotes first win}
§ _{denotes unanimous win}

Multiple award winners[link]

• Alf Sjöberg (1946, 1951)
• Francis Ford Coppola (1974, 1979)
• Bille August (1988, 1992)
• Emir Kusturica (1985, 1995)
• Shohei Imamura (1983, 1997)
• Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (1999, 2005)
• Michael Haneke (2009, 2012)

See also[link]

Film portal

• Golden Bear, the highest prize awarded at the Berlin Film Festival
• Golden Lion, the highest prize awarded at the Venice Film Festival

References[link]

External links[link]

• Palme d'Or Winners, 1976 to present, by gross box-office.
• All the Palmes d'Or. Festival-cannes.com.
• Cannes Film Festival. IMDB.

Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
Born	(1942-03-23) 23 March 1942 (age 70) Munich, Germany
Nationality	Austrian
Occupation	Filmmaker/Screenwriter
Years active	1974–present
Spouse	Susanne Haneke (1983-present)

Michael Haneke (German pronunciation: [hɑːnɛkɛ]; born 23 March 1942) is a German born Austrian filmaker and screenwriter best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work.^[1] Besides working as filmmaker he also teaches directing at the Filmacademy Vienna.

At the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, his film The White Ribbon won the Palme d'Or for best film, and at the 67th Golden Globe Awards the film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2012, his film, Love, premiered and competed at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.^[2][3] The film would go on to win the Palme d'Or, making it his second win of the prestigious award in three years and putting him in an elite club of only seven with the likes of Francis Ford Coppola.^[4] He has made films in French, German and in English.

Life and career[link]

Haneke was born in Munich, Germany, the son of the German actor and director Fritz Haneke and the Austrian actress Beatrix von Degenschild. Haneke was raised in the city Wiener Neustadt. He attended the University of Vienna to study philosophy, psychology and drama after failing to achieve success in his early attempts in acting and music. After graduating, he became a film critic and from 1967 to 1970 he worked as editor and dramaturg at the southwestern German television station Südwestfunk. He made his debut as a television director in 1974.

Haneke's feature film debut was 1989's The Seventh Continent, which served to trace out the violent and bold style that would bloom in later years. Three years later, the controversial Benny's Video put Haneke's name on the map. Haneke's greatest success came in 2001 with his most critically successful film, the French The Piano Teacher. It won the prestigious Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival and also won its stars, Benoît Magimel and Isabelle Huppert, the Best Actor and Actress awards. He has worked with Juliette Binoche (Code Unknown in 2000 and Caché in 2005), after she expressed interest in working with him.^[5] Haneke frequently worked with real-life couple Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar - thrice each.

His film, The White Ribbon, premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. The film is set in 1913 and deals with strange incidents in a small town in Northern Germany, depicting an authoritarian, fascist-like atmosphere, where children are subjected to rigid rules and suffer harsh punishments, and where strange deaths occur. The Cannes Jury presided by Isabelle Huppert and including Asia Argento, Hanif Kureishi and Robin Wright Penn awarded Haneke's film the Palme d'Or for the best feature film. In 2012, his film Love also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. So Haneke joined just 7 other filmmakers to have won the prestigious award twice: Francis Ford Coppola, Shōhei Imamura, the Dardenne brothers, Alf Sjöberg, Bille August and Emir Kusturica.

Haneke believes that films should offer viewers more space for imagination and self reflection. Films that have too much detail and moral clarity, Haneke argues, are used for mindless consumption by their viewers. It is often difficult for people to ascertain Haneke's philosophy and the exact messages he wishes to illustrate in his works.^[6]

Some of his films feature a stereotypical bourgeois couple named Anna/Anne and Georg/Georges (The Seventh Continent, Benny's Video, Funny Games, Code Unknown, Time of the Wolf, Caché, Funny Games US). The identity of the couple, as well as that of the actors portraying them, always changes from one film to another. Their surname is sometimes given as Laurent. His other films will feature characters with the same names, albeit unmarried and unrelated (such as The White Ribbon).

Stage work[link]

Haneke has directed a number of stage productions in German, which include works by Strindberg, Goethe, and Heinrich von Kleist in Berlin, Munich and Vienna. In 2006 he gave his debut as an opera director, staging Mozart's Don Giovanni for the Opéra National de Paris at Palais Garnier, when the theater's general manager was Gerard Mortier. In 2012, he was to direct Così fan tutte for the New York City Opera.^[7] This production had originally been commissioned by Jürgen Flimm for the Salzburg Festival 2009, but Haneke had to resign due to an illness preventing him from preparing the work. Haneke is now scheduled to realize the production at Madrid's Teatro Real in 2012, which then will be managed by Mortier.^[8]

Quotes[link]

"My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus."

-- From "Film as catharsis".^[9]

"Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable."^[10]

"Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth."

"My favourite film-maker of the decade is Abbas Kiarostami. He achieves a simplicity that’s so difficult to attain."^[11]

"I do think that our perception of reality is fragmentary, and in 20th-century literature, it’s totally normal to not describe reality as something whole and completely transportable and explicable. That’s been accepted in novels. But genre films always pretend that reality is transportable, which means that it is explicable."^[12]

Filmography[link]

Feature films[link]

• The Seventh Continent (1989)
• Benny's Video (1992)
• 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)
• Funny Games (1997)
• Code Unknown (2000)
• The Piano Teacher (2001) Won the Grand Prix at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival
• Time of the Wolf (2003)
• Caché (2005) (Hidden) Won the Best Director Award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival
• Funny Games (US remake) (2008)
• The White Ribbon (2009) Won the Palme d'Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival^[13] and 2010 the Golden Globe in the category "Best Foreign Language Film".
• Love (2012) Won the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival

TV films[link]

• ...Und was Kommt Danach? (1974) (After Liverpool)
• Drei Wege zum See (1976) (Three Paths to the Lake)
• Sperrmüll (1976) (Household Rubbish)
• Lemminge, Teil 1: Arkadien (1979) (Lemmings, Part 1: Arcadia)
• Lemminge, Teil 2: Verletzungen (1979) (Lemmings, Part 2: Injuries)
• Variation (1983)
• Wer war Edgar Allan? (1984) (Who Was Edgar Allen?)
• Fräulein (1985) (Miss)
• Nachruf für einen Mörder (1991) (Obituary for a Murderer)
• Die Rebellion (1992) (The Rebellion)
• Das Schloß (1997) (The Castle)

Short films[link]

• Lumière and Company' (1995) (segment "Michael Haneke/Vienne")

Bibliography[link]

• Catherine Wheatley: Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image, New York: Berghahn Books, 2009, ISBN 1-84545-722-6 review
• Michael Haneke. Special Issue of Modern Austrian Literature. 43.2, 2010.

References[link]

External links[link]

Media related to Michael Haneke at Wikimedia Commons

• Michael Haneke at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Haneke's speech at Cannes Festival 2012 Youtube link here

Charlotte Gainsbourg
Background information
Birth name	Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg
Born	(1971-07-21) 21 July 1971 (age 40) London, England, United Kingdom
Origin	Paris, France
Genres	French pop, folk rock, electro
Occupations	actress, singer
Years active	1986–present
Labels	Phonogram Records, Atlantic Records, Because Music, Vice Recordings

Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg (born 21 July 1971) is an Anglo-French actress and singer. After releasing an album with her father at the age of fifteen, more than twenty years passed before she released three albums as an adult (5:55, IRM and Stage Whisper) to commercial and critical success. Gainsbourg has also appeared in many films, including several directed by Lars von Trier, and has received both a César Award and the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award. She is the daughter of British actress Jane Birkin and French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg.

Personal life[link]

Gainsbourg with her mother Jane Birkin in 2010

Gainsbourg was born in London to Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg^[1] and was raised in Paris. Her maternal grandmother was actress Judy Campbell and her uncle is the screenwriter Andrew Birkin, who directed her in The Cement Garden. She attended École Active Bilingue Jeannine Manuel in Paris and Collège Alpin International Beau Soleil in Switzerland.

Gainsbourg's longtime partner is French-Israeli actor/director Yvan Attal,^[2] with whom she has three children: a son, Ben (born on 12 June 1997) and daughters Alice (born on 8 November 2002) and Joe (born on 16 July 2011).^[3][4]

On 5 September 2007, Gainsbourg was rushed to a Paris hospital where she underwent surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage. She had been experiencing headaches since a minor waterskiing accident in the United States several weeks prior.^[5]

Career[link]

Acting[link]

Gainsbourg at the Venice Film Festival in 2007

Gainsbourg made her motion picture debut playing Catherine Deneuve's daughter in the film Paroles et musique (1984). In 1986, Gainsbourg won a César Award for "Most Promising Actress" for L'effrontée, and, in 2000, she won "Best Supporting Actress" for the film La Bûche. In 1993, Gainsbourg made her English speaking debut in The Cement Garden, written and directed by her uncle, Andrew Birkin. She made her stage debut in 1994 in David Mamet's Oleanna at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse. In 1996, Gainsbourg starred as the title character in Jane Eyre, a film adaption of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel.

In 2006, Gainsbourg appeared alongside Gael García Bernal in Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep. In 2007, she appeared as Claire in the Todd Haynes-directed Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, also contributing a cover of the Dylan song "Just Like a Woman" to the film soundtrack. In 2009, she won the award for Best Actress at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for the film Antichrist.^[6] Gainsbourg starred in the French/Australian production, The Tree, released in 2010, and in Lars von Trier's science fiction disaster film, Melancholia.^[7] She was on the jury for the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2012.^[8] May 2012 will see the premiere of Confession of a Child of the Century, where she will star alongside the British musician Pete Doherty.^[9]

Music[link]

Gainsbourg during the Air concert in Melkweg, Amsterdam on 27 March 2007.

Gainsbourg at Webster Hall, NYC, 25 April 2010

Gainsbourg made her musical debut with her father on the song "Lemon Incest" in 1984.^[10] Two years later, she released her debut album Charlotte for Ever, which was produced by her father.

In 2000, Gainsbourg was featured on the Madonna album Music on the track "What It Feels Like For A Girl". There is a lengthy spoken intro by Gainsbourg, taken from the film The Cement Garden, which inspired the title of the song. The track was further remixed for the single version of this song in 2001, with Gainsbourg's The Cement Garden speech repeated during the song.

In 2004, she sang a duet with French pop star Étienne Daho on his single "If".

In 2006, Gainsbourg released her second album 5:55 to critical acclaim and commercial success, reaching the top spot on the French charts and achieving platinum status in the country. In the UK, the album was moderately successful, reaching #78 (The single "The Songs That We Sing" only made #129).

In late 2009, Gainsbourg released her third studio album, IRM,^[11] which was produced by Beck.^[12][13] One of the influential factors in the album's creative process was her time spent filming Antichrist.^[14] Gainsbourg's head injury in 2007 influenced the title of the album "IRM", an abbreviation for the French translation of "magnetic resonance imaging". While receiving a brain scan, she began to think about music. "When I was inside that machine," she said, "it was an escape to think about music. It's rhythm. It was very chaotic."^[15]

Her song "Heaven Can Wait" was chosen as the Starbucks iTunes Pick of the Week on 2 March 2010.^[16]

Her song "Trick Pony" appeared at the beginning of the Grey's Anatomy episode "Perfect Little Accident" (Season 6, Episode 16 / airdate: 25 February 2010). "Trick Pony" is also featured in the FIFA 11 soundtrack.^[17] and was used in the 2012 Teleflora Super Bowl advertisement featuring supermodel Adriana Lima.

Filmography[link]

Film[link]

Television[link]

Discography[link]

References[link]