AT CANNES FESTIVAL, SECRETARY-GENERAL EMPHASIZES ROLE OF CINEMA IN SERVICE OF FREEDOM

Press Release
SG/SM/6559

AT CANNES FESTIVAL, SECRETARY-GENERAL EMPHASIZES ROLE OF CINEMA IN SERVICE OF FREEDOM

Following is the text of the statement by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, delivered today at the Cannes Festival:

It really is a great pleasure for me to be here with you today. I am very grateful to the French Government and to the organizers of this renowned event for having invited me. But I am grateful to them above all for having dedicated the Festival to the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed in Paris on 10 December 1948.

The rights of the individual are the pillars that uphold human dignity. Nothing can take them away: they are not rewards that governments can grant or withhold as they please. They know no frontiers, and what better symbol of their universality could there be than to choose the film directors of the five continents to promote them? I know that France, at the instigation of Mr. Badinter, whose initiatives I gratefully acknowledged here, will be celebrating this occasion at the end of the year with, among other things, five short films, each of which will present its own vision of the articles of the Universal Declaration. They will be screened simultaneously on 10 December at the United Nations in New York and in Paris.

The cinema has always been in the service of freedom. You, the artists of the cinema, your talent enlightens and inspires the world. Make good use of it to defend human rights, sing the praises of tolerance and celebrate the right to be different -- the right to express themselves which all the world's cinemas enjoy and which, I know, the Cannes Festival has always jealously guarded.

And you journalists, you know better than anyone the importance of freedom of expression, whose exercise has cost your profession dear. Let us pay tribute here to your colleagues who have been gagged, tortured, and killed in their quest for truth.

Artists have often served as the champions of human rights, not hesitating to denounce arbitrary rule, defy tyranny and challenge oppression. I know that this tradition is alive and well. By placing your creativity, your fame and your talent at the service of the rights of the individual, you are foreshadowing a new era for mankind.

Take pride in that fact, for in so doing you are making an inestimable contribution to the world.

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