----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At 10:44 AM 4/4/95 -0500, Ulf Dalquist wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >William Brooks wrote: >>As a followup on the question of racism at the Oscars and in Hollywood in >>general, could someone in the know please tell me if the major European >>film festivals - Cannes, Venice, Berlin, etc. are as Eurocentric in their >>awarding of prizes as the Academy is in theirs? >> >Well, there's always a big fuzz about the festival in questin having 'sold out' >whenever an american film is being awarded. For some reason, the french critics >seems to be the most aggressive. People were really upset last year in Cannes, >when <sarcastic mode on> such american trash as Pulp Fiction defeated >Kieslowski's Red <sarcastic mode off>. >BTW, did you yankees know that parts of the european parlament, mainly the >French part, again, is promoting a legal limit to the import of U.S. television >programs. This is NOT a joke! > I'll add to this, and say that I was in France last year when Pulp Fiction won the palme d'or, "over" the film version of "Germinal" by Emile Zola, quite an expensive/expansive production with an all-star leading cast including Gerard Depardieu, Miou-Miou and (Ah, what's that guy's name -- the singer who played Lantier?). Anyway, the night it won, I happened to catch television coverage on one of the main networks, during which three prominent French critics proceeded to rant for hours about the upset. Among other things, one of them said that Pulp Fiction had won because Clint Eastwood was a member of the jury. This is all just for informational sake. Moreover, there was a bad atmosphere in France for Pulp Fiction to have won, especially because Jurassic park had recently left Germinal in the dust regarding box office take-in. Both were released in France at the same time, and the latter was the big French production of the year.