Paris - Among the films being screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, there is one 40-year-old movie that will forever be associated with the most tumultuous chapter in the festival's history. The forced cancellation of Peppermint Frappe, by Spanish director Carlos Saura, directly led to the cancellation of the 1968 festival, nine days after it opened at the height of the May '68 civil unrest.
On the 40th anniversary of the doomed festival, Cannes organizers have decided to revisit that turbulent era by showing Saura's work, and several others - such as Alain Resnais's Je t'aime, Je t'aime, and Aleksandr Zarkhi's Anna Karenina - that were to have been shown in 1968, but fell victim to the disturbances.
On May 10, 1968, when the 21st Cannes Film Festival got under way, all hell broke loose in France.
That night, more than 30,000 demonstrators, most of them students, took over Paris' Latin Quarter, setting up dozens of barricades made of paving stones.
In the ensuing police crackdown, more than 1,000 people were hurt and nearly 500 were arrested. The next day, unions called for a general strike to support the students.
If the people who ran the Cannes Film Festival believed their celebration of world cinema would remain untouched by events, they soon found out how seriously mistaken they were.
In fact, French cinema - which was going through a revolution of its own, the New Wave, that would eventually influence filmmakers all over the world - was ripe for protest, and the Cannes festival presented the ideal stage.
In February, French Culture Minister Andre Malraux had fired the iconic head of the National Cinematheque in Paris, Henri Langlois, because the government of Charles de Gaulle wanted to install a director more amenable to its conservative cultural ideas.
A revered figure in French cinema, Langlois is still considered the godfather of New Wave cinema. As soon as the news of his firing spread, directors, cinephiles and other interested parties took to the streets of Paris.
Among the protesters were Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Roberto Rosselini and the stars of the French New Wave, directors Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.
In addition, the festival - which opened its 1968 programme with a showing of the restored version of Gone With the Wind - was widely viewed as having become solemn, boring and conservative.
One critic, Edgar Schneider, wrote in the daily France-Soir, "The festival resembles a reception of stiffly aligned bodies at the Elysee Palace."
That soon changed, as students invaded the Croisette and erected symbolic barricades near the Palace of Festivals.
Then Truffaut arrived with news that it had been decided, by the students at the School of Cinema in Paris, that filmmakers were to join the general strike that had been called for May 13.
Things quickly deteriorated from there. On May 18, Godard, Truffaut, Roman Polanski and a number of other directors held a press conference in a festival screening room that soon mirrored the political turbulence of the world outside.
"We must show solidarity with the student movement in France," Godard demanded. "The best way to do that is to stop all projections."
When a pro-festival spectator challenged him, the Swiss-born director shouted, "I'm talking to you about solidarity with the students and workers, and you are talking to me about tracking shots and close-ups."
When projectionists tried to show the scheduled film, Godard, Truffaut and other protesters clung to the curtain to prevent it from opening, and the screening was called off. The film was Saura's Peppermint Frappe. A near-brawl then erupted on stage. The next day the festival was cancelled.
The cancellation led many to doubt the future of the festival. But it came back the next year, bigger then before.
A group of young French filmmakers had reacted with horror to the political exploitation of the festival, and established a programme called Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, or Directors' Fortnight, which made its debut in 1969.
The Directors' Fortnight was intended to be a forum where films could be presented free from "all forms of censorship and diplomatic considerations."
Or, as another young director, Pierre Kast, put it: "All movies are created free and equal. We must help them stay that way."
