This is a real ‘first’ in the history of the Cannes Film Festival that recognizes the added value of audiovisual creations dedicated to distribution channels other than the big screen; in particular, the Cannes Festival is interested in TV series, thus escaping the constraint for one’s presence in the movie theater, with a long tale to tell-over the long term-about characters, circumstances, worlds, like the great stories of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.
By acting this way, the Festival recognizes the social and economic role of platforms which, like Netflix and its imitators, offer their customers an increasingly large inventory of movies and series of all kinds, which they produce themselves more and more often.
These platforms were, however, until very recently, violently opposed by the film world, that actively resisted the consumption of films via the Internet, free of charge or through a subscription, that could be viewed as ‘theft’ and convinced that the only movie worth watching was one purchased with a movie theater ticket.
Ironically, it is at the moment that this recognition becomes essential in films that it is, in fact, out of date: indeed, before long, fewer and fewer people will go on these platforms to dig in the film catalogs; and soon the spectators will only be interested in the new releases; each platform will then become a quasi-television channel, where one will only look for what is new, and where film catalogs will have less and less value.
This is not peculiar to the cinema platforms: it has been the case for some time for the music platforms, music signaling as always major social transformations; and this will soon be the case with everything, imposing a mad rule upon society: inventory is worth nothing, the only thing worth paying attention to is flow.
Admittedly, inventory is in principle much more important than flow, since it is the sum of all past flows; but it will soon be worth almost nothing because the only thing that will count will be what is called « novelty. »
Indeed, this is what is under way in many other areas: literature, philosophy, politics, economics, only what is new will be relevant. And we will forget so much the past that it will only be valued dressed as new: new performers of a musical work; a reinterpretation of an old theme by a new author; a very old ideology, even rancid, exposed by a new speaker.
In response, we are going to see-and are already seeing-a return to nostalgia, the refusal of flow, for the sole benefit of inventory; what is old will be idealized, held sacred; what is new will then be hunted down, prohibited.
Both approaches are nonsense, they will destroy our prosperity; prosperity which requires being open to the new and learning from the past, without choosing between the two, opening a dialogue between old and new, learning from one in order to create the other; through reading, listening, watching, the great classics, to learn to choose what is best in the ever-increasing flow of novelties that are often derisory.