At the Marche, filmmakers' diamonds in the rough

CANNES, FRANCE — As a film critic, I'm thrilled to take in the Cannes Film Festival's official competition, to watch as the world's great auteurs go mano a mano for the Palme d'Or. And with films by Jane Campion and Jacques Audiard, this year has been a strong one. But everyone in Cannes has a secret vice -- it comes with the territory -- and mine is the Marche, or the market.

An enormous event held in conjunction with the festival, the Marche is the world's most impressive film marketplace, where buyers and sellers from more than 100 countries -- from Algeria and Argentina to Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Vietnam -- congregate to haggle over films that are often no one's idea of timeless cin- ema.

An estimated 4,500 films are in the market in one state or another, from rough ideas to finished works, with about 900 available for screening in 35 rooms that range in size from 40 seats to 360. There are so many people here to see them that the official directory of market participants is 1,048 pages long.

My media pass gives me access to the Marche area of Cannes, and wandering around the displays and the sales booths is always a pleasure. And educational. How else would I discover, as I did this year, the enduring power of kung fu with films like "Metallic Attraction: Kung Fu Cyborg" and "Kung Fu Chefs" on offer? Or that Chow Yun Fat, after years of acting in violent Hong Kong action films, has seen the light and is starring in the decidedly different "Confucius."

It's the energy of the films in the Marche that always compels me, the willingness to go with out-there concepts like "The Attack of the Giant Mousaka," a favorite from years past. Among the high-concept highlights this time was "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead" and "Iron Sky," about an attack on Earth by Nazis who've been hiding all these years on a base on the dark side of the moon. "Get Ready," the poster reads. "The Fourth Reich Is Here."

This year, for the first time, I dared to go a little deeper into the market. I acquired a Marche pass, which gave me unlimited access to as many of those 900 films as I could fit into my schedule.

I'd gotten into market screenings before on a catch-as-catch-can basis, and those had provided some memorable Cannes experiences, like feeling the excitement when an unattached "Waking Ned Devine" debuted in 1998 and put the buyers in the room into acquisition overdrive.