Jean Zay, creator of the Cannes Film Festival

Jean Zay, creator of the Cannes Film Festival

Today, 4 personalities who have marked the history of France will make their entrance to the Pantheon in Paris. Among them, Jean ZAY, former Minister of National Education of the Popular Front, assassinated by the militia in 1944. Although he was not originally from the French Riviera, he nevertheless left a strong mark on it through the Cannes Film Festival, which he helped create in 1938 in order to compete with the Mostra of Venice, which had fallen into the hands of Mussolini’s fascist regime. The first edition of the Festival was to open on September 1, 1939, the day of the invasion of Poland by the Wehrmacht and thus the beginning of the Second World War. It was of course cancelled. Comment on factual images and archives and interviews

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File : Cannes Film Festival

Publication date : 27 May 2015