CHARIOTS OF FIRE producer David Puttnam is to return to film making after nearly two decades with a film about the Arctic and Greenpeace activists. The English peer made the announcement last week at the Cannes Film Festival which closed with a documentary film Ice and the Sky by Luc Jacquet, the director of the brilliant March of the Penguins.
Ice and the Sky is a documentary about fellow Frenchman Claude Lorius, an expert on glaciers who has been at the forefront of research on the Antarctic and the impact of humans on global warming. The film ends with the question: “Now you know. What are you going to do about it?”
One of the things that could be done perhaps is for the Cannes Film Festival, a brilliant showcase for talent, to address its own image, one of gross and very conspicuous consumption where the stars of gritty raw dramas about the poor arrive for the premier dressed (or undressed) in eye-wateringly expensive haute couture. It’s a massive 10-day junket of red carpets, flash cars, $million yachts, all washed down with champagne at the lavish all-night parties. It seems all frankly rather obscene and bizarrely at odds with the very serious nature of much of the material it shows.
This year’s winner of the Palme d’Or is perhaps a case in point. Dheepan is the story of refugees fleeing Sri Lanka to seek refuge in Europe. Directed by Jacques Audiard, it was a surprise choice from the judging panel led by American filmmakers the Coen brothers, Joel ad Ethan. Audiard’s films include A Prophet and the lesser known Rust and Bone. Hardly Hollywood material.
The last two Cannes winners have been called art-house epics; the grindingly long slow drama Winter Sleep, 2014, selected by the jury headed by Jane Campion and Blue is the Warmest Color, by Steven Spielberg’s in 2013.
Blue is probably the warmest colour at the poles which only climate deniers (and there are plenty in Congress) refuse to admit are getting warmer due to human activity.
Puttnam’s new film will tell the story of 30 Greenpeace activists who were imprisoned by Russia in 2013 for protesting about oil drilling in the Arctic. Emma Thompson is one of the collaborators in the project which will see Puttnam, 74, making his first film in 17 years.
The legendary British film maker, who is now a peer, will be working with Hani Farsi of Corniche Pictures. He said: “Rather late in life I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that the only professional tool I have is that of a one-time film producer.”
David Puttnam’s Greatest Hits
The Mission
The Killing Fields
Local Hero
Chariots Of Fire
Midnight Express
Bugsy Malone
Stardust.