Cannes Film Festival Posters: 1939 – 1992

The French Film Festival UK introduces a special selection of Cannes Festival posters from 1939 to 1991. The Festival de Cannes’ official poster is a hotly anticipated event:  it sets the tone for each edition and is draped across the Palais des Festivals’ facade’ for the duration of the Festival. This exhibition provides a snapshot of some of the images of the Festival between 1939 and 1992. 

While every Cannes poster since 2005 have featured photographs, the festival’s first use of a photograph came much earlier, in 1973, with an image capturing the serene waves on the Croisette beach for its 26th edition. Illustrated posters were a long-standing Festival de Cannes tradition for many years: 45 of all 75 official posters feature drawings or paintings, with artwork especially created for the event by A.M. Rodicq (1951),  Jouineau and Bourduge (1973), and Wojciech Siudmak (1975, 1976). 

Each featured posters offers a glimpse of the aesthetic of the time it was produced in, some of which by great filmmakers. The 1982 poster for instance was illustrated by Federico Fellini. The maestro nearly became an illustrator as a young man, and throughout his life he kept up the practice of sketching out his dreams, drawing the fantasies, characters and décors he brought to life in his films. In 1983, the poster was illustrated by another incredibly talented director: none other than Akira Kurosawa.