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Journalist’s notebook
Strict measures are being taken on the first major occasion of a foreign film since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
By Eleanor Stanford
VENICE – Most viewers attending this year’s Venice Film Festival have not been to a cinema for months.
“I was very moved by the first screening, with other people from all over the world celebrating film,” said Laura Pritchard, 54, a British filmmaker living here.”I soloze.
The only distraction of this intense moment, he said, the mask he wore.”They’re not that effective when a movie makes you cry and they’re covered in tears,” she laughs.
The 77th edition of the festival, which opened on Wednesday and will run until September 12, is the first major foreign film occasion to take a position since the coronavirus closed theaters, movie stages and public gatherings around the world.
Venice, the world’s oldest film festival, has built a reputation in recent years for releasing Oscar-winning films such as ‘Joker’ through Todd Phillips (2019), ‘The Favorite’ through Yorgos Lanthimos (2018 ) and ‘La La Land’. Damien Chazelle (2016). This year’s visitors should wear a mask not only in the screening rooms, but also in the enclosed festival grounds, which includes outdoor seating, cafes and restaurants.
Other strict virus-spreading measures have also been put in place, with hand sanitizing stations at the front of the buildings and the movements of accredited delegates at the festival buildings are tracked via scanned passes in the event of an outbreak. necessary between spectators.
In many ways, the delight of remote social cinema is comfortable: there is room to stretch, monopolize armrests is guilt-free and you can stretch your legs luxuriously.The unusual delight of reacting to the big screen remains, only with more non-public space.
There are almost twice the same number of previous screenings to accommodate a smaller, socially remote audience, and the festival has two new outdoor screening spaces: one on the Lido’s most sensitive ice rink, a thin island in Venice’s lagoon.; and others in the gardens of the main island of Venice (fortunately, the weather during the first days of the festival is dry and temperate).
Festival staff members were attentive, even if they were a little inconsistent, in applying the mask rule, telling those who wore little use to put them on their noses.However, this week, in rest areas, visitors left their mask to eat, drink and While participants dressed in sunglasses discussed videos and drank Aperol spritz, the coronavirus seemed, for a while or two, far enough away.
“Having to wear a mask even at screenings is a nightmare,” said Marianna Serandrei, 54, from Venice, who has been attending the festival since she was a teenager, but “human beings can really get used to almost anything,” he said, adding that he would tolerate wearing a mask if it meant being able to continue his annual festival culture of watching up to 3 movies a day.
Unlike in the United States, where dressing in masks has a divisive political problem, Italians sometimes stick to the rules, but before the festival started, it became obvious that covering your face can be a controversial topic.
On 25 August, the organizers announced that Cristi Puiu, a Romanian filmmaker who had been invited to join the festival jury, would resign after “unexpected difficulties” arose.He replaced through American actor Matt Dillon.
The festival spokeswoman said Puiu was not provided for “personal reasons,” however, many media outlets speculated that the resolution was influenced by a speech she gave about the presentation of her new film, “Malmkrog”, at the level of the Transylvanian International Film Festival.Month.
According to local media, Puiu said that it is “inhumane” to force the public to wear a mask while watching the 200-minute film. He did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
This year’s lineup includes films from more than 50 countries and, for the first time in a decade, the Italian opening film “Lacci” through Daniele Luchetti, a winding wedding drama set in Naples.Pedro Almodóvar’s new short film, “The Human Voice, “starring Tilda Swinton and founded on a play through Jean Cocteau, which will be seen this week, and later at the festival, will premiere “Nomadland”through Chloe Zhao and “One Night in Miami”, Regina King’s first film.
But with Italy from the US still limited and the same force of Hollywood stars from the occasion toned down, this year’s festival has a European flair.
This was underlined through Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, who invited administrators from seven major European film festivals, adding Thierry Frémaux from Cannes, to kick off the event. Many of those festivals, such as Cannes, will not have face-to-face occasions this year, the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain takes place this month and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic is scheduled for November. At a press convention on Wednesday, Barberá called the presence of the other administrators in Venice an expression of solidarity.
Film festival executives compete, for films, for jurors, but this year saw a more collaborative approach, Barbera said.
“Watching videos at broadcast facilities has helped us in recent months,” he said, but “the threat is that we have slow relief on the role of theatrical cinema in the film industry.Array”.
Around the world, movie theaters will reopen after being closed for months, and on festival stages, stars and directors have advocated for the big screen. At the opening ceremony, Cate Blanchett, president of the festival jury, said that “cinema comes to life when it comes to an event.”
Swinton, the British actress who won the Golden Lion for Career on Wednesday, said in her acceptance speech that being in “a room with living creatures and a big screen” is “pure joy.”
This sentiment is shared throughout the festival goers. Patty Thompson, 74, an American living in Venice, said she booked her tickets months ago and that the new festival setup had advantages. The new online booking formula had “eliminated all the stress,” he said. You have to stay in the sun for a long time waiting for the ticket office. “
The coronavirus has hit Italy early and hard, resulting in more than 35,000 deaths to date. The country entered a strict lockdown in late March and Venice, overrun by foreign tourists, was almost empty.
It was “very difficult,” said Serandrei, the regular at the festival, who runs two hotels in the city.Now, with the lifting of restrictions on Italy from many European countries, visitors are returning, posing for photographs on bridges and taking beautiful gondola rides.
The film generated a stir that locals said they enjoyed after months of abandoned streets.
“At forty, Venice, in spite of all its beauty, dead, ” said Pritchard.”Any return to life is a smart thing, even if they buy plastic tea!”
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