Les Plages Électroniques

Les Plages Électroniques is a house and techno festival. The first night was 5 July 2006, on the beach of the Palais des Festivals, in Cannes. David Bartoli, Gabrielle De Villoutreys and Ben Geli put it on. They had already worked together as Panda Events since 2004 and signed the date as Panda 06. It is not Les Sables Électroniques. It is not Les Nuits Électriques. Those dates have other sites and other histories. Here the sound comes off the sand in front of the film palace, in July, on the Mediterranean.

That first night fell on the World Cup semi-final between France and Portugal. About four hundred people came. The team showed the match on the beach and then played the records. David Lisnard, then president of the Palais des Festivals, backed a youth event in a building the public links to cinema. The first season was five themed nights. A ticket cost five euros. Krikor closed as the first headliner. There was no indoor hall. The site was the palace beach, with the Croisette behind and the sea in front.

Panda Events dated from 2004. Bartoli, De Villoutreys and Geli were not starting from a major label. They were starting from local nights and a Palais willing to try a crowd other than the film festival’s. The format of those first seasons was summer nights, not a sealed weekend. You bought a ticket per date. You walked down onto the sand. You heard house or techno according to the night. The palace stayed a palace. The beach, for a few hours, was a floor.

In 2008 the jump was measured with Boys Noize. The team expected about three thousand people. About ten thousand came. That figure is not a trophy. It explains why a film-festival beach stopped being a five-euro trial. Club house and techno could sit in Cannes if the site held. Local reports remember that night as the moment the scale changed. The Palais and the sand stayed the same place. The number of people walking down from the Croisette did not.

In 2015 the format moved from summer nights to a three-day festival. The city did not change. The hours the crowd spent on the beach did: from a single night to a July block. In 2017 Ben Geli and Matthieu Corosine created Allover, the structure that took over production. The name Les Plages Électroniques stayed. The credit behind it did not. The origin still sits with Panda 06 and the three founders. Later production carries the Allover name. Both layers sit on the same sand.

There are two sister dates with similar names and other ground. Pistes Électroniques started in 2009 at Isola 2000, in the mountains. Martizik was put on in 2010 in Martinique. They are not this festival. They share a team or a production kinship, not the Cannes beach. Les Sables Électroniques and Les Nuits Électriques are not this either. Mixing them because they all sound electronic and plural in French is a coast error. Here the site is the Palais des Festivals beach. The sea is one step. The film palace is the other.

The beach is not a forest and not a racecourse. It is sand, shoreline and a film-festival building at your back. By day Cannes is a walking town. By night, in July, the kick comes from the waterline. You do not walk kilometres between stages if the rig sits compact on the sand. If there is wind, the sound shifts. If there is heat, the shore gives no tree shade. You arrive on foot from the centre, by train to Cannes or by car along the coast. There is no field campsite. There is a hotel, a flat or a train home. The crowd mixes summer visitors, people from Nice and fans who come only for the bill.

The Palais façade is the same wall that, in other months, backs the film-festival carpet. In July it is a wall and a soundbox. There is no forest path. There is the Croisette, then a stair or a ramp down to the sand. Shoes fill with grit. The sea is one step away and, if there is swell, it sits between tracks. After the last set the town is still Cannes: hotels, late restaurants, a station. The festival does not invent a village. It occupies a beach the city already has, in front of the most photographed building on that coast.

Les Plages Électroniques reads as the festival three Panda 06 producers built on the Palais beach, on the same day France played a World Cup semi-final, with four hundred people and a five-euro ticket. House and techno sit in that sentence. So do Krikor, the Boys Noize overflow in 2008 and the move to three days in 2015. Isola 2000 and Martinique are other coasts and other altitudes. Cannes lends the cinema sand. The rest is a dance floor, July and sea.