The Venice Film Festival: A Very Italian Affair

Good article in The Independent today about the Venice film festival and the number of Italian films in competition. I disagree with a couple of things – mostly quotes from one Lee Marshall:

The film critic Lee Marshall writes in Screen International: “Venice 2008 is one of the clearest illustrations to date of the identity crisis the traditional, all-inclusive film festival is facing. It has been clear for some time that the age of the auteur is over; these days even dedicated, high-frequency viewers generally choose films by buzz rather than director.”

And yet the festival includes films by the Coen Brothers and Darren Aronofsky, who are exactly that, directors with ‘pull’. At least as much as, say John Huston or Elia Kazan were (they were succesful because they made reliably good, but quite different films). And if anyone is an auteur, wouldn’t it be Pupi Avati?

Or:

“Cinema is (almost) no longer cinema … The type of ‘classic’ contemporary cinema such as Venice seemed designed to support has finally run out of steam. The idea of a ‘modern’ cinema that lasts 50 years is a contradiction in terms.”

Which frankly sounds like someone trying to create a zeitgeist (hey, everybody needs a good zeitgeist occassionally!)

Anyway, apart from that, it’s an interesting article.

About Matt Blake 890 Articles
The WildEye is a blog dedicated to the wild world of Italian cinema (and, ok, sometimes I digress into discussing films from other countries as well). Peplums, comedies, dramas, spaghetti westerns... they're all covered here.

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