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Over the past three decades the making of the Palme D’or has been in the hands of the Chopard family at its Swiss headquarters on the edge of Geneva.
Every year, the iconic awards are carefully created for the Cannes Film Festival using the same traditional techniques and delicate methods.
Caroline Scheufele, Chopard’s co-president and artistic director, personally oversees the production from conception to creation and her role in the process came about by chance.
“Actually, we opened up a boutique in front of the Palais, so in my thoughts – I have always been a cinema lover of the seventh art. I thought we should open it during the film festival as there would be obviously some celebrities and so on,” Scheufele explained to Euronews Culture.
“I met the president, at the time Pierre Viot, in Paris some months before and during the conversation I was looking around his beautiful Parisian office, he was a real French gentlemen, I said “that’s the real Palme” it was standing on his shelf.
He says, “Yeah, well we were thinking to relook it, restyle it, it’s been 15 years and I said “who produces it?” and he said “I think a small atelier in Paris”. I said, “You know my real job is not organising glamourous dinners and parties, my real job is designing, can I propose to you how this Palme can be a little bit more aesthetical, elegant, glamourous and he said “sure”. So basically I left that day with the Palme under my arm and 29 years down the road we are here.”
The creation process
The life of the Palme begins in the foundry, where the gold is mixed and melted with other metals to be readied for the workshop.
Here is where the casting begins. Wax is pushed into a mould to make a model for a plaster cast, which the artist carefully controls and inspects, before putting it into a furnace where it spends an entire night.
Gold is reintroduced to fill the cavities in the mould. The plaster is then broken to reveal the raw Palme, which is then cleaned up and ready for its next parts – filing, finishing and polishing.
Each step can last for several hours as the procedures are a delicate and painstaking manoeuvres. The final step for the finished Palme is being attached to a unique piece of rock crystal.
“The little Chopard touch would be that little heart shape at the bottom of the leaf. It’s pretty symbolic for Chopard. I design a lot with hearts. Heart-shaped any type of stones,” said Scheufele.
“I gave it some flow, because it was very flat, it was like a truck had run over it. So not very elegant, and it was not 18 carat gold either, it was gold-plated. By now, it is not only 18 carat gold, it is ethical gold.”
The 79th Cannes Film Festival runs from 12-23 May and the South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook is the jury president for the main competition to decide this year’s Palme d’Or.
Video editor • Joseph Allen