Archiving, preserving, digitizing, restoring and... showcasing—more than anything, the Cannes Classics section, part of the Official Selection of the Festival de Cannes, is all about giving a start to a new exposure to many film classics. Those films will find their ways to theaters, festivals, retrospectives, DVD-Blu-rays, TV channels and VOD/SVOD in the near future. Besides that, the section devotes itself to documentaries about cinema, tributes and, fresh from 2018, Rendez-vous with famous directors and actors, first-class masterclasses open to a large audience. Initiated by General Manager Thierry Frémaux in 2004, the man in charge of the selection foresaw that, considering the evolution from celluloid to digital, classics would move from one medium to another and would be restored to meet new audiences. Cannes had screened restored classics for a long time (in 1968, the opening film was a restored print of Gone with the Wind!) and documentaries dealing with cinema (Visions of Light, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies or Easy Riders, Raging Bulls were events in their own way) as well as what used to be called "Leçons de cinema" with directors or actors. New prints, brand-new restored films, films introduced by casts or artists, these were new ingredients to the section. Under one banner, Thierry Frémaux worked to unify the section and give it a full boost, even widening the section to films on Beach Macé, next to the Palais des Festivals, open to a general audience for free. Submissions from all over the world, from producers, distributors, cinematheques, archive, sales agents, foundations, directors themselves, give the section a rich and colorful palette with various themes based on what the world of restoration has to offer. With the help and the energy of the Hungarian Film Archives Cannes Classics was able to screen masterpieces by André de Toth, Miklós Jancsó, Károly Makk and Zoltán Fábri in the recent years. We hope this is what you will find in this tribute for you to enjoy a selection on the moves, ready to explore the past with classics, (re)discoveries and—always—gems. 
Gérald Duchaussoy