The 59th Cannes Film Festival opened its doors on Wednesday 17th May and ended on Sunday 28th May 2006 with the award of the much coveted Palme d’Or. This year it was won by the British Director Ken Loach for his film “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”. For these 12 days, Cannes changes decor, pace and style and becomes the Mecca of cinema capturing the religious nature of cinephilia.

While Hollywood may be the place to make movies, Cannes is certainly the place where you go and see them, as top directors, producers and world-famous stars invade this once small sleepy fishing village to present their newest creations.

We arrived in Cannes late afternoon, on the last day of the festival - and indeed, Cannes had changed skins. It is strange to visit a town that we’ve seen at various times of the year only to discover a totally different character. Our visit there was not so much to attend the film showings, but to enjoy the crowds and get a feel of the atmosphere. And indeed, we were not disappointed.

We parked in one of the underground car parks close to the Town Hall and walked out to find the harbour filled with gleaming white yachts and stunning motor boats gently tugging at their tie-ropes.

As we strolled towards La Croisette and the Festival Hall, negotiating grey metallic barriers as we did so, the presence of the French CRS (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité) who in France, amongst other duties, are most famous as riot police, was very noticeable: directing traffic, milling with the crowds or on motorbikes escorting VIPs.

Enormous LCD screens were strategically placed at each side of the Festival Hall displaying sneak film previews. Come the evening, when the anxious stars climbed the red carpet, their faces filled the screens much to the delight of all the on-lookers.

But the Cannes Film Festival is really a show within a show with its hordes of spectators adding that extra zest to already sparkling entertainment. While the accent may be placed on the screening of new films, for us the enjoyment was just watching the crowds, the flashy cars and seeing the Cannes Festival from this angle - rather than the “film” side of things.

While we missed out on seeing some famous stars climbing the red carpet we did enjoy seeing hundreds of spectators scrambling up trees, dangling from street lamps or tottering precariously on step-ladders and barriers.

History of Cannes Film Festival
Initially, the festival was launched in September 1939 as an indirect result of the rise of the prevalent fascist regimes in Europe, although its roots actually date back to 1932 when the first competitive international film festival was held in Venice, Italy.

When Jean Renoir’s film “La Grande Illusion” (starring Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo and Erich von Stroheim) a largely anti-war film, was overlooked in 1938 for the festival’s top prize, the French were outraged and withdrew from the festival. The British and American jury members followed suit and all resigned in protest at the idea that politics and ideology could stamp all over artistic appreciation.

That same year a group of critics and filmmakers banded together and petitioned the French Government to underwrite the cost of running an alternative international film festival in France. After much debate, they finally agreed.

The inauguration of the Cannes Film Festival took place on the night of 1st September 1939 - only to be closed down the following day due to the outbreak of World War II. The festival re-emerged on the 20th September 1946 under the joint sponsorship of the French ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education and took place in the old winter casino. In 1947 it was moved under the wing of the newly-formed Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), a government body charged with supporting and promoting the cinematic arts and preserving France’s screen history.

In the early days, films were nominated by their respective countries rather than the festival itself. As a result, Cannes was more of a “film forum” than a competitive event. Financial problems prevented the 1950 festival going ahead but by the early 1950s it had grown enough in strength and confidence to change the venue dates from September to April. The reasons were two-fold: firstly, many observers noted that competing festivals (Berlin and Venice) took place earlier in the year and, secondly, September was considered to be less conducive to attracting people to Cannes as summer had passed.

In 1954 two things happened which changed the image of Cannes forever. The first was the idea of awarding trophies (incorporating a palm leaf and icon of the town designed by Jean Cocteau) - while the second idea was the introduction of “sex” to the festival’s image. A Robert Mitchum photo call had French starlet Simone Sylva showing her assets - which of course hit the national news wires of the day - and put Cannes on the map; the advent of the gorgeous bikini-clad Brigitte Bardot only went to further promote Cannes as a sexy resort.

In the early days Cannes was mainly an event for tourists and socialites who were often more interested in attending the many parties in the expensive hotels and luxury villas than they were in watching the films. However, as the festival's popularity increased it gradually became a place for the international film industry to gather, do business, and discuss future projects.

In 1972 it was decided that the festival would look after the process of choosing films for inclusion in the official selection, thus setting the blueprint for the selection format which is used by most modern international film festivals today. By the 1980s the festival had outgrown its home in the Palais Croisette. Not wanting to lose the lucrative event, the City of Cannes commissioned a new Palais des Festivals et des Congrès on the site of the old winter casino.

Completed in December 1982 the new Palais hosted its first festival in 1983. To celebrate the opening, the City of Cannes invited many stars, past and present, to leave their hand-prints in clay outside the building on Esplanade Georges Pompidou, a tradition that lasted many years.

Today, Cannes is the most famous of all film festivals and one of the largest media events on the planet. The festival has an annual budget of around €20m, half of which comes from the French Ministry of Culture and Communications (through the Centre National du Cinéma), with the rest from the City of Cannes, various regional authorities and a large group of corporate sponsors.

Each year more than 1,500 films from over 100 countries are submitted to be considered for a very limited number of places in the official selection.

It is made up of seven major sections - In Competition; Out of Competition; Un Certain Regard; Cinefondation; Critics' Week; Directors' Fortnight and Marché du Film.