Don’t Just Dream of Cannes l’Impossible, Catch Up on It All Online

Even if you had the time and megabucks to jet to the South of France, you probably wouldn’t get anywhere close to the preeminent film festival in the beach town of Cannes. Perhaps you would survive asphyxiation at the knees of supermodels and giants of industry, but you would surely be shunned from the yacht parties and glittering premieres.

Better to sit at home and graze through cyberia’s vast landscape of online film festivals, where the red velvet ropes are always pushed aside for you.

Virtually jet on over to the official site for the 51st Cannes International Film Festival at https://www.festival-cannes.fr/. Visit daily from the festival’s opening on Wednesday through its closing night, May 24, for news and live video of ceremonies, press conferences, photos sessions and exclusive interviews.

You can check in early to thumb through the lineup of films in and out of competition that hail from 16 countries and read snippets of dialogue from the movies.

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, ‘Duke, I feel a bit light-headed’ ” is from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” written and directed by Terry Gilliam.

After orienting yourself with the map of the luxurious seaside town, you can probably fake your way through a cocktail party, keeping up with those who have truly “done Cannes.” Select the Travel section and click on sections of the Cannes map to see more.

In the Archive section, you can relive festival highlights from 1946 to 1996 or revisit the 1997 50th anniversary site of the Cannes International Film Festival. Dig deep and you’ll find fun tidbits such as the fact that in 1959, Kim Novak demanded a fur coat to go from her hotel to the Palais--the temperature was nearly 80 degrees. The Archive section provides the background on the festival’s creation.

You may choose to forgo Cannes’ official site in favor of the reporting at Film Scouts (https://www.filmscouts.com/festivals/cannes98/index.html). Here, you can read impartial reviews of the films as they are screened, as well as up-to-the-minute buzz, interviews and personal daily diaries of Cannes minutia.

View film clips and interviews in RealVideo or Quicktime. Film Scouts also offers a tres droll quickie French lesson so you can bone up on your Cannes-speak. For instance, say you want to say, “I haven’t seen any films, I’ve got too many appointments.” Film Scouts not only provides you with the translation (Je n’ai vu aucun film. Trop de rendez-vous.) but the hidden meaning as well: “Actually, I don’t have credentials so I can’t get in.”

If you’d like news, views and reviews of the Cannes festival mailed directly to your e-mail box, you might want to subscribe to indieWIRE.com, the first daily trade publication devoted to the indie film community. Go to https://www.indiewire.com/subscribe/ to get the e-mail newsletters that the indie industry thrives on.

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Erika Milvy is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. She can be reached online aterika@well.com.