Gérard Rondeau — Chronique d’un festival
Exhibition from 8 October to 26 December 2025
Maison des Arcades
Impasse du Balladou. 83310 Grimaud
In 1989 and 1990, the newspaper Le Monde sent Gérard Rondeau to Cannes to cover the 42nd and 43rd editions of the Festival.
The challenge: to publish one photo per day, accompanied by a caption by Danièle Heymann.
This exhibition brings together current events and myths, blurring the lines between the two.
“We only know what the festival wants us to see: stars, if there are any left, and the scheduled jostling for celebrity status.
Photographers at the Cannes Film Festival have to wear tuxedos in the sun like maître d’s and wait on the terraces until they are released, at the appointed hour, in packs, upon their prey. It is therefore normal that photographers in Cannes most often capture only clichés in their shots: their frustration, their bitterness, and the willing bare breasts of pathetic starlets.Gérard Rondeau came to Cannes for the first time in 1989, and his loving yet uncompromising gaze changed everything. He saw the truth of Cannes and captured it without rancour or preconceptions. He saw the loneliness of the dinosaurs of the silver screen in the sad suites of the palaces, and the cheerfulness of the onlookers sated with pan bagnats and indecipherable autographs. He saw the Croisette waking up, washed clean of all fatigue, and the beauty of Nastassja Kinski.
He saw the proud galleon from Polanski’s Pirates, anchored forever in the harbour and now smaller than a memory. He saw a snake man in front of the new Palais and Gregory Peck’s gesture as he said goodbye. Gérard Rondeau saw everything and, above all, understood everything.”
Danièle Heimann, for Le Monde, 1990
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