16/05/2005

The Belgian company Cinélibre, which has been ‘distributing light for thirty years now’, chose to celebrate this on the Croisette, in collaboration with the French Community of Belgium. On Sunday night, a thousand professionals —from Belgium and from elsewhere—, as well as the Ministers Fadila Laanan and Didier Reynders, and Henry Ingberg, General Secretary of the French Community of Belgium, attended the party in front of the Hotel Martinez. After the performance of the Belgian singer Jeff Bodart, the Belgian night reached an apex with an exceptional concert, Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra. Indeed, the President of the jury decided to accept the invitation of Eliane du Bois (the director and co-founder of Cinélibre/Cinéart) who supported all his films in Belgium. The famous director and great musician’s performance was stunning and as lively as his films, for he chose his group’s hottest songs. For some of them, he even had the Spanish actor Javier Bardem (who is also a member of the jury and whose film Mar adentro was also distributed by Cinélibre) play the drums.

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Since 1975, Cinélibre has always defended the most daring projects and promoted quality films, Belgian or not. For that matter, Cinélibre is also the distributor of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s films : La Promesse (Directors’ Fortnight), Rosetta (Golden Palm and Best actress), Le Fils (Best actor), and L’enfant, in competition this year. The many films distributed by Cinélibre over the years won many prizes at international festivals, including no less than eleven Golden Palms in Cannes. It is also Cinélibre which discovered quite a few talented directors such as Wim Wenders, David Lynch, Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch, and Emir Kusturica, who all became regular guests of the Cannes Film Festival and remain, as yesterday’s concert showed, very grateful to the Belgian company.

(Translated from French)