Chacun son cinéma (To each his own cinema) - 27 June 2010

Directorial credits (partial list): Angelopoulos, Assayas, Campion, Chahine, Coen brothers, Cronenberg, Dardenne brothers, Egoyan, Konchalovsky, Kiarostami, Kitano, Lelouch, Loach, Moretti, Polanski, Ruiz, von Trier, Wenders, Wong

Film notes: "To each his own cinema", goes the title of this omnibus film to beat all omnibus films. Gilles Jacob, president of the Cannes Film Festival, invited 30-odd of the most acclaimed directors in the world to contribute to the celebrations of the Festival's 60th birthday. The result is billed as "a declaration of love to the big screen". The invitation to each director was to express, in three minutes of film, his or her "state of mind, in the moment, as inspired by the motion picture theatre". Naturally, there is no summarizing this anthology of responses to Jacob's invitation. Theo Angelopoulos, for example, bemoans the demise of the collective viewing experience. The Coen brothers picture a cowboy trying to decide what movie to see in sunny Los Angeles. Zhang Yimou tenderly gathers rural youngsters together for a screening in a movie theatre. And Abbas Kiarostami offers a tribute to women's love of romantic cinema. Between the archival footage and the original material, the cast list ranges wonderfully from the stellar names we all know to first-time actors.

Jacob's film-world diplomacy is impressive, in terms of the number of national cinemas that are represented in this commemoration of the world's foremost international film festival. But what does it say about Cannes that Jacob remembered Australia whilst appearing to forget about India?