Peter Jackson will be presented with an honorary Palme d’Or at the opening night ceremony at this year’s 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival , even though he’s never had a film play the fest itself. Nevertheless, he’s left a lasting imprint on Cannes. Jackson has recalled first visiting the Croisette in 1988 because his first movie,  Bad Taste , was in the marketplace. But it was his return trip in 2001 that made cinema history, when he offered the first glimpse of footage from  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring .  New Line Cinema’s decision to invest more than $270 million in three films based on the J.R.R. Tolkien classic was considered a big gamble, if not an outright folly. But the 26 minutes of footage previewed for the press quickly silenced the naysayers.…