Cannes Day one, getting our barings.

Monday May 16^th, 2016. Day 1 of Cannes.

Seriously, thank goodness Marthe has such a great sense of direction and has been to the city of Cannes before, or I’d be lost every minute. She marvels at me several times a day and says, “really? You don’t know where you are?” But together we make a good team.

We started with a wild goose chase for the elusive breakfast. We wanted to pick up our passes for the Short Film Corner, and then to the American Pavillion, where we also have passes (BTW, that’s the only country’s pavilion that charges an entry fee). There are breakfasts at the SFC, but you have to sign up for them. And we got confused. We just kept asking people where the breakfast was, and was sent to a producer’s breakfast where we were not invited. So we roamed around side streets until we found a great, but unbelievably expensive place to eat. It was really good, but wow. I accidently ordered 2 orange juices and so I drank a 6 Euro juice I didn’t want.

The rest of the day was mostly exploring the festival. They gave us welcome bags with a LOT of catalogs and schedules. And it weighed 20 lbs. So I tossed most of it at breakfast while Marthe unbelievably carried it all around all day. I had brought 6 lbs of flyers and cards about our film, “Thank You Lisa” and I had to put them in a separate bag so I wouldn’t be over the weight limit. So I was not about to repack my bag with more weight to go home.

There were only 2 good things about having passes to the American Pavillion (AmPav), and FYI if you are only going to the festival for a few days, you can buy day passes for 20 Euros, which we did not know. 1: charging stations and wifi. But honestly, I bet almost every pavilion has that. We did at the Norwegian one too. And 2: panel discussions. And AmPav might be the only Pavillion to have those. Today we went to 2 panels, one on the state of documentaries and one on women in film. Both interesting. Although jetlag was not helping me. There’s also a mini restaurant at AmPav where you can get American food. But really? I’m in France. Why would I want American food? They also have a bizarre company supplying coffee type drinks, power bars and other supplements called, Bullet Proof. Mr. Bullet Proof was there talking and signing autographs. It’s supposedly all natural. But the stuff in it, was not stuff I wanted. Every cup of coffee has about a 1/3 a stick of butter in it. I’m dairy free. And I don’t drink coffee. But even if I did. I don’t want it in the same cup.

The best thing today was our meeting of a group of women from LA. It’s a secret group. I can’t tell you who they are, or I have to kill you. But we connected prior to Cannes and then had a little drink hour. We expected 8 or more, but it was a tight 7 here, Marthe Einseth, Jane Clark, Reena Dutt, Karolina Mikolajczak, Fawzia Mirza, Alisson Fhal, and me. They’re awesome women. So I was really happy to sit and chat with Americans in a relaxing atmosphere and hear about other people’s experiences here and in media in general.