Debbie Austin

TravelAbility was invited to provide advice to the American Pavilion (AmPav) at the Cannes Film Festival. The AmPav is part of a luxury tent city of International Pavilions where producers, directors and filmmakers hang out to schmooze, network and jockey for distribution and deal-making.  A coterie of hospitality, tourism, event management and film students, the latter of which are angling for internships or a receptive ear to listen to their pitch for script ideas, work in the Pavilion restaurant, conference center and at the hospitality desk. The pavilions are on a platform resting on the sand about 20 steps from the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.   The American Pavilion was easily four to five times larger than that of any other country’s pavilion.  We were invited to observe at Cannes by our consultant who has also consulted for the Pavilion’s founder for 34 years.

The American Pavilion, The company tag line is Independent, International, Inclusive.

What’s the back-story on your invitation to attend the Festival?

JS: The American Pavilion is the brainchild of Julie Sisk, a college friend of our consultant, who proposed a stand-alone tent on the beach to Cannes executives 35 years ago to serve as a way-station for members of the film industry who needed a quiet oasis away from the hubbub of distractions where they could network, make deals, or just relax. Today 60 countries take space in the Village International- Festival De Cannes and Sisk is the trailblazer who started it all. 

Sisk’s early history and network, not to mention the cachet of Hollywood, has resulted in space enough for The Roger Ebert Conference Center where a full program of panel discussions and film screenings take place, plentiful lounge space, a working café offering American comfort food under the direction of highly acclaimed chef Vish Mayekar ,a former AmPav culinary program intern who now runs two award winning Italian restaurants in Vancouver and has been a contestant on Top Chef Canada. The restaurant does about 300 covers a day and the chef and his culinary student team cater private lunches and dinners throughout the festival. I had lunch at the bar, where I happened to meet Patrick Friend, the Executive Producer of Jimmy Kimmel Live, who was serving as the café’s cashier that day.  Don’t ask.

The Pavilion also offers a bespoke program for non-industry film enthusiasts called Insider’s Cannes– a once in a lifetime trip and behind the scenes experience that is usually only available to film industry professionals.

How Accessible was the Cannes Film Festival and The American Pavilion?

JS: In addition to soaking up the glamor and glitter, we were there to review the existing accessibility features and suggest areas of improvement. Here’s what we found. 

The Festival

For wheelchair users, the pathways leading from the street to the pavilions and theaters were largely flat and there were sufficient ramp options to most of the pavilions, with the exception of the tents behind the V.I.P. section, which required negotiating stairs. Accessible bathrooms were available a couple of minutes away in the Riviera convention center, which also had adequate ramps and elevators that were accessible.  Information staff were positioned at the entrance to the Palais, the focal point of the festival and the home of the original Red Carpet. They pointed out all the accessible features on a schematic map and directed us to a “hospitality office,” located on the main floor of the Palais. The sole purpose of the office was to offer assistance and information for people with disabilities.  Enroute to the office we stumbled upon the Cannes Office de Tourisme, which offered a free map identifying accessibility along the waterfront including beaches that were accessible with mats and chairs that can be rented. 

At the hospitality office we met with Tania Schultze, an independent provider of event staffing for many congress events throughout Western Europe including IMEX, who told us that most of the theatre venues were accessible for wheelchair users and the festival also provides a list of films which have audio description for blind and low vision festival goers as well which theaters have hearing loops. The hospitality office this year was a direct result of some of the blisteringly negative press from last year’s festival such as the “Cannes 2022 Inaccessible Press Release”.     Tania and her two associates were available to offer accessibility assistance to anyone who needed it. It appeared that Cannes had two of the three components of accessibility well in hand: physical accessibility and trained service professionals, but we needed the perspective of attendees with an actual disability to get a sense of the lived experience.

Film Student Taylor Leigh in sunglasses with Jake Steinman and other attendees at the discussion

We were invited to lead a roundtable discussion on accessibility for students in the American Pavilion Student lounge where we met Taylor Aguilar Leigh, a film student who lost her vision through a degenerative disease three years ago and was selected for the AmPav Student Program. She came to Cannes to learn and network in the hopes of pitching her idea for a documentary series about blind travelers visiting a different destination each episode to potential producers. Her primary travel challenges were the absence of options on airline tickets for blindness, uneven surfaces and hotel showers. Prior to attending, she was introduced by a mutual friend to Jim Le Brecht, director of Crip Camp, last year’s academy award nominee for best documentary. Though he knew she was blind, he ironically asked her to report back about accessibility at the Festival as he feared traveling to the event as a wheelchair user.  This perhaps best demonstrates the typical absence of the last component of proactive accessibility, which is letting the targeted audience know about accessibility features and services that are available.  A news release about the accessible features in the Hollywood Reporter or Variety containing links to all accessibility features and the new dedicated hospitality center would have made actors, writers and filmmakers with a disability feel more welcome.

The stars aren’t the only ones posing for Papparazzi:Sarah Chanderia, CEO of Hacate Entertainment Group

The American Pavilion

While at the opening reception at the AmPav, we met Sarah Chanderia, who has MS and was tooling around Cannes in her scooter. She is the owner of Hacate Entertainment Group, which secures licensing rights to American films and music in Norway.  Originally from New York, she moved to Oslo, Norway over a decade ago as she not only recognized an underserved industry niche for her business but also discovered Norway’s incredibly abundant—and free—services for people with disabilities.

When Chanderia was fifteen she bought Elton John records and took them to radio stations insisting they should play his music. One day she got a call from Elton’s record label where they asked her “Why are you doing this?” She responded: “Well he’s the best artist in the whole world and every radio station should be playing his music!” Two weeks later the record label offered the fifteen-year-old Sarah a job as Elton John’s radio promoter. And the rest is history. She told us that both her scooter and her assistant, who traveled with her to Cannes, were paid for by the Norwegian government.  She found the American Pavilion to be physically accessible with a well-trained staff very willing to make accommodations and seating adjustments with a can-do attitude to provide anything extra she needed.  

10 In-destination suggestions, apps and websites that can make the Cannes Experience more meaningful for attendees with disabilities

1. Install more wayfinding signage for accessible bathrooms, elevators, or other accessibility features. 
2. Add the following three drop-down menus to their website accessibility landing page:: •Venues that are hearing looped, •Closed caption films and screenings; captioning and • Audio described films/screenings
3. Aira, a visual interpreting service. Live, on-demand access to humans that can help blind or visually impaired attendees negotiate airports or crowded festival venues.
4. Jeenie ,a modern interpreting platform connects you to a video/audio call with a live, qualified interpreter for 300 languages–including American Sign Language—in a matter of seconds.
5. Seeing AI an app that helps blind/visually impaired attendees with everything from signage to currencies denomination.
6. Sunflower Lanyard. The Hidden Disabilities Sunflower is a simple tool for you to voluntarily share that you have a disability or condition that may not be immediately apparent – and that you may need a helping hand, understanding, or more time in shops, at work, on transport, or in public spaces.
7. Wheel the World. An accessible hotel booking site that assessing hotels based on 200 data accessibility points, will provide attendees with information about properties with rooms that best meet their needs.
8. Enchroma: Glasses for individuals with color blindness that will brighten the experience and lives of filmgoers.
9. Centaur Wheelchair.  Many of the kiosks and counters are inaccessible for people that cannot stand. Offering for use during the Festival the Centaur wheelchair , a power wheelchair that is the width of a dining room chair and can elevate the user to eye level .
10. Purple Lens. A cost-effective system that remediates websites using a hybrid platform of plug-ins supported by a DIY toolkit for webmasters and developers.

The Alliance brings together hospitality industry leaders and strategic partners, such as Sage Inclusion, to address key challenges affecting the planet and its people, local destinations and communities. Improving inclusivity within the industry is one part of the Alliance’s Pathway to “Net Positive Hospitality,” which sets ambitious targets to create a prosperous and responsible global hospitality sector that gives back to the destination more than it takes. For example, the program’s framework outlines how organizations can measure, minimize and embed diversity and inclusivity within its value chain, with the aim to go beyond this and advocate for inclusivity beyond the value chain.To learn more visit Sage Inclusion

Our Takeaway: Sage Inclusion is the latest iteration of accessible travel entrepreneur John Sage’s effort to bring accessibility to the attention of the hotel community by combining it with sustainability to provide a one-two punch.