‘8’ is Enough for Van Sant, Nair, Campion, Bernal et al.

Cannes presented themselves with a 60th birthday present called Chacun son cinema, the city of lights sent itself a postcard with plenty of X’s and O’s with Paris, je t’aime and more recently, NYC served as the backdrop for bite-sized morsels of life in New York, I Love
You. What do these projects have in common? Besides the financial backing of a French producer (…or two), they’ve got a slew of talented filmmakers paired with name actors: a combo that is a key selling point for concept films of the sort. In most cases, what is exciting about these short film collective projects is that it allows established filmmakers to return to their humble beginnings as storytellers with little considerations for budget and a healthy dose of freedom of expression. I recently came across one of these lesser known projects, with a mandate that is noble in design.

Produced
by Marc Oberon and Lissandra Haulica, 8 takes the short films within one feature paradigm and promotes “the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aim to reduce world poverty by half by 2015.” With Gael Garcia Bernal adding the final piece to the puzzle (a project he filmed in Iceland of all places and completed last March) the project was being pitched to buyers in Cannes and boasts a collective that includes talents the four corners of the globe in Chacun son cinema directors Jane Campion, Wim Wenders and Gus Van Sant completed with the participation of Mira Nair, Jan Kounen, Gaspar Noe and Abderrahmane Sissako. For more info on the project: head on over here.