30/08/2006

The International Critics Week (SIC), organised by the Italian National Film Critics Union, has for 21 years been an important part of the Venice Film Festival.
Kicking off with an homage to the great Otto Preminger, on the occasion of the centennial of his birth and the 20th anniversary of his death, this year (from August 31-September) the SIC finds itself curiously traversed by the theme of “disappearance”, beginning with its opening film, Bunny Lake is Missing, made by the late Austrian director in 1965, about the mysterious kidnapping of a little girl in 1960s London. We spoke with Delegate General Francesco Di Pace.

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Cineuropa: Three European, one Argentinean, one Canadian, one Taiwanese and one US film will vie for the Critics Week award. Let’s begin with your selection of European titles.
Francesco di Pace: Let’s begin with France, which is, as always, a very active country, cinematically speaking. This year we once again had a list of high-level debut films: our choice (and I’d like to point out that we snatched it away from a very important festival) was the directorial debut of Jean-Pierre Darroussin, one of Robert Guediguian’s favourite actors, who with "Le pressentiment" (Premonition) has made a very personal film in which he also stars. The film is about displacement and changing one’s identity, about the search for new meaning to one’s own life.

We’re very happy to have two titles in competition from Eastern Europe, two very different film school films: Egyetleneim, by Hungary’s Gyula Nemes is virtuoso and frenetic (a lot of hand-held camera work, as well as a formidable tracking shot that is almost ten minutes long, by a director who studied at Prague’s FAMU with teachers such as Vera Chytilova and Karel Vachek), while Hyena by Polish director Lewandowski is elegant and full of suspenseful. It is a horror story whose main characters is a young boy grappling with the passage from an age of fear to one of courage (the film was supervised by Krzysztof Zanussi).

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints by US director Dito Montiel was produced by British rock star Sting and his wife Trudie Styler. How did you find this film with the beautiful title?
The film won an award at Sundance, but we saw it at the Cannes Market, at a very crowded screening. We contacted them almost immediately and evidently the prestige of Critics Week and Venice must have convinced them. Montiel is a name to watch out for: Robert Downey Jr. noticed him at a reading of an autobiographical story of his and pushed him to make a film. The cast is very impressive (Chazz Palmintieri, Rosario Dawson, Downey Jr.) but the most surprising element is the directing.

Let’s talk about the other films...
Argentinean film El Amarillo by Sergio Mazza is the confirmation of a golden moment for recent Latin American cinema: a film that unfolds in a non-place, with a measured sense of sentiment, humour and musicality. Sur la trace d'Igor Rizzi by Canada’s Noel Mitrani is a witty and surreal noir, reminiscent of Jarmusch and Kaurismaki. Taiwan’s Yi Nian Zhi Chu - Do Over by Yu-Chieh Chieng may be one of the big discoveries of Venice: with its circular structure and temporal returns, it takes place between the end of one year and the beginning of another, featuring characters who could possibly change the course of their lives, if only they wanted to.

The only Italian title is La rieducazione (lit. “Re-Education”), presented as a special event; an extremely low-budget debut film. What was the reasoning behind this choice?
The film is not of competition because it was shot in video and we had no guarantee that it could be transferred onto film in time (our rules about this are strict); and also because it’s a small film that perhaps would have suffered a comparison to films with higher production values. Having said that, La rieducazione is that film that shows the way, without presumption, just through ideas and a desire to create, and was made by young filmmakers with a cinematic perspective, which is what we liked most about it. We wanted to invite another example of young Italian cinema, a better supported film, if you will, but in the end the producers did not feel like coming to Venice.

The theme of disappearance and searching that connects the selected films could symbolically reflect the “absence” of a new Italian cinema. This year, there are no Italian films in competition. You have said that there will not be even one debut Italian feature throughout the entire Venice Film Festival. The new law and the considerable cuts to film funding have led to a particularly scarce season. What are your thoughts on this?
I think it’s impossible to deny that Italian cinema is not going through a good period, beyond the four or five films that do the festival circuit and give a false impression on [Italian cinema’s] condition. The season, as you say, is scarce and this inevitably reflects upon debut films: few producers are willing to risk on unknown names and offers that don’t bring with them a package of fashionable actors and, above all, themes and styles resembling [the cloyingly clever Notte prima degli esami or the popular films by director Gabriele Muccino] – with all due respect to the few who are trying to make personal projects and whose films, in all honesty, we did not like.

There is something new this year in Italy, a new festival in Rome with a considerable budget, which is arousing much controversy. For many, it is a true threat to Venice. Did the Critics Week suffer an “open season” of films, if there was one? And how do you in particular view the inevitable "competition" between the two festivals?
I don’t think the competition really affected the [SIC]: we were interested in only one film [that the other wanted], as far as I know. Venice still enjoys a certain prestige, and perhaps even the SIC. Having said that, I think these somewhat premature discussions: the Rome Film Festival still has to show its capabilities, while Venice is capable of hurting itself all by itself, then if you add politicians to the mix… I think that Venice needs to be defended and strengthened. Rome could become that which Paris Cinema is with respect to Cannes. But this is only my opinion.