There's something almost philological about being director of the Venice Film Festival for fifteen years, as Alberto Barbera is, and having been born into a context where cinema was a form of almost daily escape. In Occhieppo Inferiore, in the Biellese area, Alberto Barbera was watching films as a child because his uncle sat behind the cash register of the very same cinema. What's it like surviving the pressures? What's it like seeing thousands of films a year and then choosing thirty that become part of the festival you have to direct? We'll have him tell us today. After two years of vain pursuit, Barbera has arrived in Rome, and we, like predators, have snatched him to have him tell us a bit about his life.
There's a small town called Occhieppo Inferiore near Biella, and there's an uncle who, like in the songs of Paolo Conte, only the nephew understands the uncle, and the uncle understands this nephew. He's sitting at the cash register of the parish cinema of the town, where, as you remembered, first-run films arrive with a two-year delay, and there's a child who at four and a half discovers with terror the magic of cinema. I wanted you to describe this initial scene.
Yes, it happened exactly that way. My uncle worked as a second job as the cinema doorman, and he lived inside the cinema. He was also the custodian, so when I went to visit him in the evening, or at any time, and my two little cousins were there—whose bedroom, if we can call it that, had been carved out beneath the gallery with the seats, so that from their bedroom they could hear the entire film when there was a screening running.
Then one Sunday afternoon, my father and I stopped by to say goodbye to my uncle. My father took me into the hall, and I saw this tense scene that terrified me, so I immediately asked to leave. So my first impression was fear, but that's one of the many emotions you experience in cinema. With fear, there's also joy, laughter, the emotion tied to feelings, and so on. But the strongest emotions are obviously, on one hand, fear, and on the other, the expression of joy in comic films or comedies.
Fear evidently didn't prevent me from becoming passionate about cinema. On the contrary, it was the trigger that sparked my curiosity about this strange thing. So shortly after, a few months later—I was, I believe, not more than five years old—I began regularly attending the cinema. My grandmother more often accompanied me, perhaps on Sunday afternoons. As in all parish cinemas, first-run films arrived late, as you remembered, especially American comedies and Italian 'peplum' films, which were my first great passion as a young teenager. But also some classic films—I remember seeing, when I was no more than six, Chaplin's 'Modern Times,' which absolutely enthralled me. And all the Chaplin films, but I watched everything that was there. I systematically went to the cinema every Sunday, and I did this for years and years, until around age thirteen or fourteen, I started going to Biella, where first-run screenings were available.
And there too I can tell you about the first time—it was Christmas Eve, and there was the first screening of a James Bond film, 'Thunderball.' We go to the cinema on a Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m., stay in the hall to watch two films—the same film twice in a row. We come out at 6 p.m. and it's snowing. So the third viewing of the film was truly an epiphany, an uncontrollable joy. It was a wonderful film we loved. There was me, my brother, maybe a few friends. And then the snow outside. Well, two extraordinary emotions I've never forgotten.
After that, I systematically went to the cinema in Biella, often alone because I didn't share this passion with many friends. So I had to go by myself, but it didn't weigh on me. I'd leave home on Sunday afternoon, sometimes take the bus, sometimes walk—it was three kilometers, doable in half an hour. I'd go to the cinema, then come home rethinking the film I'd seen. And I did this systematically throughout my high school years.
I don't want to be rhetorically nostalgic about the 1950s, but I'd like you to describe what kind of time it was. Italy had obviously emerged from a brutal conflict. On April 25, 1945, there's the Liberation, and there's a country where two out of ten houses had fallen, as Conte sings.
Yes. Let's say that in the town where I grew up, where I stayed until moving to Turin for university, the effects of the war weren't very visible. It wasn't a city that had been particularly touched by the negative consequences—bombings or firefights and so on. There was the memory tied to some plaques, or maybe a bullet hole still visible on a building. But there was an unawareness—I didn't realize, and I believe my schoolmates and friends didn't either, that the war had perhaps ended only a very short time before. Only later did I realize I was born just five years after the end of World War II—an incredibly short time, but that hadn't yet generated any awareness.
My father and my uncle had both served in the war. My father had been taken by the Americans to a prisoner-of-war camp in the United States, where he stayed for more than a year until the end of the Second World War. They almost never spoke about the war—very few memories. And I, somewhat foolishly, I must say, never prompted those memories. Now I regret it since my father is no longer here, because I would have so many things to ask him.
Because he was taken away? He was captured?
My father was in an anti-aircraft battery at the Trapani airport in Sicily. When the Americans landed in Sicily, they took all the Italians who were there and transferred them to America to a relative prisoner-of-war camp. From 1943 until the end of the war—so practically two years. A prisoner-of-war camp with relative freedom—they could go out during the day, had contact with the local population. I know my father joined a local choir. But I know nothing about what he did during those two years. I imagine he perhaps had a romance, because I remember seeing a photograph with a beautiful girl and this girl's parents. But he never talked about it, never said a word. He'd learned a few words of English, but very few. He returned, as all soldiers did, with a trunk full of blankets or things the Americans donated to Italian soldiers before repatriating them. And then he started working. My father was a great worker, a textile worker.
Yes, he was a textile worker.
The first thing he thought of doing after marrying my mother in 1948 was to build a house—which he managed to do within a few years, taking on debts, loans from friends, banks, and so on. In 1956, he inaugurated this little house, which is where my brother and his son still live, on the border between Occhieppo Inferiore and Occhieppo Superiore—that's where we all grew up.
You remember your own—like Sorrentino says, the province is a room where you always end up bumping into the same people. And you consider yourself provincial?
Certainly. I mean, I was provincial, and then I remember when I moved to Turin and never returned to Biella except to visit my parents, relatives, cousins, and so on.
I had already started working quite early, even during university, at the IACE of Turin, which was the cinema association of Piedmont, which at the time was very strong—28,000 members—and had some cinemas in the city, then also in the rest of the region. I started working at IACE, first writing the leaflets distributed free at cinema entrances, and then being increasingly involved in the operational and organizational structure. Gianni Volpi, one of the founders of the journal Ombre Rosse and a close friend of Gofredo Fofi, had introduced me to Fofi, speaking highly of me. I don't know why, but we met and evidently liked each other.
Well, it was very easy to be liked by Fofi, by the way.
No, I'm talking about Volpi, because he presented me to Fofi and spoke highly of this boy from the province. And I remember Fofi's comment: 'It's true, the province is a surprisingly rich source of talents who arrive like that, out of the blue, without reason or explanation.'
That was lucky. He was benevolent.
I got lucky. It went very well. Except, of course—I remained friends with Fofi too. We frequented each other for a long time, even when he criticized me, because Fofi criticized everyone, especially friends more than ideological adversaries. And when I became director of Venice, he didn't spare me some barbs, but always with that friendly tone that characterized him. It was a strange way of confronting different positions on themes that were in some way shared.
I mean, you share with Dario Argento an experience as a critic—he did it at Paesi Sera, you at Gazzetta del Popolo, Turin's oldest newspaper and one of the oldest in Italy. Tell us about it. Argento, for example, loved American westerns, was crazy about John Ford, and for his editor at Paesi Sera, that cinema was crap, let's say without mincing words. But there was a taste for dialectic, for confrontation. The screenwriters Agli and Scarpelli had a thousand anecdotes about this. That's something that's been lost.
I believe that's one of the things I miss most, and that cinema today misses the most. The taste for comparison, for discussion—even animated discussion—capable of going deep, of re-examining not just prejudices but also the easiest ideas that come to mind.
When did this happen? When did we all become so touchy? When did we start getting offended?
I don't know if it's true, but perhaps it all started with social media. In the sense that social media marked a rupture compared to the dimension that characterized the entire postwar period up to the end of the last century. Social media imposed this individualization of the relationship—now let's talk about cinema, for example. Those moments of shared experience disappeared: the cine clubs, but also ordinary cinema outings with friends, after which there were debates, discussions. I remember going to the cinema with friends, leaving at midnight, standing outside the closed theater for an hour discussing the film, arguing, sometimes getting heated trying to impose different opinions. All that has completely disappeared. Cinema is now consumed individually.
And then social media unleash the worst part of us—that form of aggression that each of us possesses and that we usually tend to contain or mask when we're in a dialectical exchange.
I totally agree with you, but they'll call us old fogies, dear Alberto.
I know. I know, but this is the truth of the facts. What prevails today on social media— which I frequent less and less—is verbal aggression, insults, visceral and often violent reactions that are completely unjustified, to the detriment of reasoning, depth, and genuine dialogue.
Because reasoning takes effort. It's more complicated than the snappy, caustic comeback. By the way, you wanted to be a director at some point, right?
Well, like all children, yes. From the beginning I wanted to work in cinema, and like all children, I wanted to be an actor. The first thing that strikes you at the cinema are the actors, obviously. Then, as I reached adolescence, I realized there was a more important figure than the actor—the one who was in charge, who was never seen, who stood behind the camera and managed everything: the director. So I thought I wanted to be a director. I even tried to get my father to send me to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia while I was still in high school. My father, in his wisdom—provincial wisdom—said, 'No, you go to university, and then you decide independently what you want to do, whether you want to try for the Centro Sperimentale or not.'
Not much time passed before I understood that being a director requires great talent, which I didn't have. And I also thought that since there are already so many terrible directors around the world, it wasn't worth increasing the number of those who do damage to cinema. But I wanted to work in cinema, and I found the only viable path, which was becoming a film critic and cinema organizer.
Working at IACE, I learned to organize festivals, screenings, and presentations. Then I had a stroke of luck when they offered me work at the Gazzetta del Popolo. Marco Vallora, a close friend of mine, had left the Gazzetta to go to Panorama and introduced me to the editor. I had a very brief meeting, they put me to the test, and after the first review I wrote, they decided to hire me—though I was paid under the table, 200,000 lire a month. I assure you, even though it was the late 1970s, that wasn't much, because I wrote at least one article a day, if not more.
I reviewed every film released in Italian cinemas for two consecutive years. At the time, there were about 400 films a year, so you can quickly calculate how many reviews I wrote, not counting the festivals I was sent to—Cannes, Venice, Pesaro, and some smaller events.
What were those makeshift hotels like?
Well, it depended. At Pesaro, you were hosted—the hotels were more or less decent. At Cannes, you had to find your own. But actually, I inherited a room from Marco Vallora in a fairly central hotel, so it wasn't too uncomfortable. I paid my dues from a young age, learning simultaneously to interpret films, to judge them, to serve as a mediator between readers and potential audiences, and on the other hand, becoming a decent organizer.
All of this served me when I left the Gazzetta del Popolo, and after my experience at IACE ended, I started working for the Torino Film Festival.
Torino is a key city. The first time you saw it, you said it reminded you of New York, right? In terms of scale.
Arriving from Biella, it seemed enormous. It's a wonderful city.
And in those years when it's impossible not to be involved in politics somehow, you found yourself in it, right? There was workers' autonomy, workers' vanguard, countless unions and sub-unions. Let's talk about 1969, the Hot Autumn.
Yes, exactly. An infernal year, from the Piazza Fontana bombing onward, which was prodromic to all the red and black terrorism that followed.
And you found yourself in this world, and then one evening the police arrive looking for a Red Brigades member, and that opens your eyes?
Well, I was enrolled in architecture at the time. And in my provincial naivety, on the opening day of the academic year at the Polytechnic, which also housed the architecture faculty, I show up at the Castello del Valentino, where architecture was located in Turin. Naturally, no one was there—the architecture faculty was occupied, had been occupied for three, maybe four consecutive years. So I arrive, find no one, and wonder: what do I do now? I'm absolutely incapable of figuring out how to navigate an unexpected, unprecedented situation.
Then, by a stroke of luck, I run into a high school friend also enrolled in architecture, of whom I knew nothing. Together we show up and discover the faculty is occupied by various far-left groups—those tied to Lotta Continua, Potere Operaio, the autonomists, and so on. We join one of these occupied classrooms that had a big red sign outside reading 'Autonomous Area Architecture.' We attended this classroom for a year, where we read Piacentini pamphlets, discussed politics, participated in illegal occupations of housing for the unemployed, and experienced police charges.
One time the police arrive and a classmate of yours has a stroke of—I'd call it a stroke of genius.
So, to escape the police charge, we start running. This friend of mine—my high school classmate—to try to help the unemployed, what do we call them, lunghe, he throws himself against one of these protective construction nets to try to break through and loses a shoe. At that moment a policeman arrives with a truncheon, clearly not in a friendly manner. And he says: 'No, wait a second, I need to find my shoe, I need to find my shoe, then you can truncheon me.' That was the somewhat surreal climate of the time.
Anyway, after a year—so on one side there was the university dimension, the political groups, the ideological debates of those years. And on the other side, especially in the evenings but often also in the afternoons, there was the cinema. Turin is a cinephile city, one of the great cinephile cities, where even in small neighborhood cinemas, parish cinemas, they would re-screen classics of cinema history that today we find easily on streaming platforms but that were extremely hard to see back then.
So the first thing I did every morning was read the schedules of Turin's ninety-odd cinemas and note down the films I wanted to see. Then I'd go around with a map looking for these venues to watch those films. I saw nearly all of Hitchcock, which was constantly re-shown even though those films were fifteen or twenty years old. Great classics—I saw a huge range of everything. That was my first historical film education, tied to these third- and fourth-run Turin cinemas.
You said the ending of 'The Wild Bunch' still makes you cry. The ending.
'The Wild Bunch' is the film I believe I've seen the most times in absolute terms, and every time at the end I can't help but be moved. I think the western is the quintessential film genre, and most westerns are absolutely extraordinary. Whenever I have a moment, I dig out some westerns I haven't seen yet, because I obviously haven't managed to see them all.
There are other genres I love very much—film noir, for example, another extraordinary genre. Classic American comedy is wonderful. But above all, the western.
The Italian western is also a pauperist work of ingenuity, because if you remove Leone—who had his own problems—you take Tessari, Sergio Sollima, and so on—they were films made by setting the West in Manziana, in Abruzzo, in Ameria, and so on.
Yes, absolutely. But that's already something very particular. I loved the classic American western—that's what I'm talking about.
Today, revisiting classic American cinema forces a reflection, especially given what's happening in our current, bitter present—on how cinema contributed decisively and fundamentally to building the myth of an America that in reality doesn't exist. America as the cradle of democracy, the place of individual achievement, the paradise of opportunities offered to anyone, access to success and happiness—all things that exist only in American cinema, not in reality. Because as soon as you go to America, especially in recent times, you realize it's exactly the opposite: the most racist country in the world, the country where social inequalities are strongest and most radical. Everything the opposite of the American Dream that cinema helped create.
But it's a fantastic mythology—it's the only contemporary mythology that can be compared to the great myths of antiquity that are at the foundation of our culture and cultural formation.
It's also true—and what you say is absolutely true—but it's also true that cinema itself, from within, has demolished the myth it built. I think of Coppola, and so on. One of the things the New Hollywood did from the 1970s onward was precisely trying to demolish the falsity of this mythology.
But it persists, and it's extraordinary, because if you revisit these classic films that, as I said, built this extraordinary mythology brick by brick—it's something moving, fantastic, enthralling, and also ideally positive, because it's a vehicle for values in which we can recognize ourselves, indeed must recognize ourselves, as they are the founding values of democracy as we understand it in the West. They have extraordinary educational value. This doesn't mean we should prevent our children from watching these films, telling them they're telling falsehoods because that world doesn't exist outside cinema. No, we must let them rewatch, because those are values that must still be supported and passed on today, even though they depict a world that exists largely only in cinema. Well, not entirely only in cinema—I've somewhat overstated.
Of course, you were a bit dogmatic, but that's fine, that's perfectly fine.
Also the result of some disappointment, you understand? I've been frequenting the United States recently for work, and I must say I've gradually realized how much that myth no longer exists today—or those values are no longer the reference values of American society, or they are for only a part that unfortunately is not the majority today.
You described it well before—at a certain point in this dizzying journey, you find yourself—and we're already in the 1990s, right? Late 80s, early 90s—at the helm of Torino Film Festival.
Yes. I started working for Torino in 1982, became director of Torino Film Festival in 1989, and remained artistic director—with organizational and administrative responsibilities as well—until 1998. When I was contacted by Paolo Baratta, the new president of La Biennale di Venezia, who proposed that I go to direct the Venice Film Exhibition.
And you, surprised, said no?
Yes, I said no, because the Biennale had a terrible reputation. It came from decades of political raiding, ideological conditioning of all kinds. The Biennale's image was that of an ungovernable place where it was difficult, if not impossible, to resist external pressures and conditioning. While in Turin I was in an ideal situation—I had nearly total responsibility for the festival, absolute autonomy, and the trust of the president, who was my university professor Gianni Rondolino, and of the funders—the city, the region, the province, the two banking foundations.
Let's say this, because Italian ingenuity isn't just Nino Taranto and Totò and their fountain—it's also a university student who goes to his professor Gianni Vattimo and somehow convinces him to design a study program that essentially requires your constant presence in front of a cinema screen.
Yes, but at the time it lasted only briefly—it was a window in which you could create a personalized study plan, provided there was a university professor willing to approve it. I went to Vattimo, recommended by one of his former assistants who had become an assistant in architecture, and I proposed this study program that consisted almost entirely of cinema history, theater history, literature history, and very little else. Repeated exams for four years straight. He says, 'Yes, that's fine, but how are you with philosophy?' I say, 'Well, I did it in high school.' Out of pure courtesy, he says, 'Let's add a moral philosophy exam.' I say, 'Fine, let's add a philosophy exam.' He made me add two exams to the list and signed it.
So I actually did nothing but—I can confess another thing—I rarely attended. I basically only showed up to take exams or to attend three seminars: Vattimo's Aesthetics seminars, Gianni Rondolino's, who had meanwhile obtained one of the first chairs in cinema history at an Italian university, and Giorgio Barberi Squarotti's modern and contemporary literature seminars. These were the seminars I attended. For all other exams, I read the books indicated by the professor and then showed up for the exam. The rest of the time I spent in cinemas, afternoon and evening, afternoon and evening. That's where I built my film education—certainly with gaps, because there are so many films I haven't seen that I would have liked to, but it's the education that has served me for what I still do today.
Now I've tried to see as much as possible of all types and from all cultural backgrounds. Because meanwhile in Turin there had been born an extraordinary Cineclub—the Movie Club—which was one of the great Italian cineclubs, alongside Filmstudio in Rome, Ombre Rosse in Milan, and the Cineteca di Bologna's Lumière.
And there they only showed classic cinema, predominantly American but not exclusively. So between the films recovered in third-run series and those seen at the Movie Club—those were the formative years, the extraordinary years, the years of discoveries, of great films, of great directors.
You watched the trashy ones too, right? Because you mentioned earlier—
I watched everything, everything. When I wrote for the Gazzetta del Popolo for those two and a half years, I saw every film released in theaters, and that was the other great formative experience. Because if you only watch great classics, it's like reading only great novels—you don't realize literature is also made of much else. And cinema is the same. So seeing everything that came out in theaters, from the most atrocious trash to the great films of those seasons, gave you an idea of what cinema was at that moment. You had a precise sense of the situation, perhaps conditioned by the filter of commercial distribution, but you had an idea of what cinema was at that precise moment—the early 1980s, 1979, 1980, 1981. Those were the years I frequented cinema daily in first run, and it served me enormously.
Have you happened to read that splendid volume of memoirs that Luca Parlan wrote for the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, called 'Cambiare champagne'? In it is everything you were describing—an industry capable of producing 300 films, the acrobatic stories of Italian producers and those who tried to finance these films, which then perhaps allowed the producer to divert some funds to make an Antonioni.
That was the fantastic thing. The same producers who made the most commercial films—sometimes of questionable quality—were the ones who financed the great authors of Italian cinema: Fellini, Rossellini, Antonioni, and so on. There was this coexistence within the same industrial system that allowed great directors to express themselves in total freedom, producing films that had enormous success worldwide, were distributed, were known, and made the greatness of Italian cinema alongside that commercial cinema—the commedia all'italiana, the films of Sordi, Gassman, Tognazzi, and so on. Which meant that in the 1960s, Italian cinema was the second most distributed and most-watched cinema in the world—ahead of French, Brazilian, and English cinema. An absolutely incredible, unrepeatable season.
I think E.B. Clucher—Enzo Barboni—made some of the most important box office Italian films alongside Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, while masters of the poliziottesco like Lenzi were making films where sometimes they'd take pieces of footage from other contemporary productions and splice them in because they were missing a chase scene. An extraordinary, heroic season.
And I return to Torino because Paolo Baratta arrives and proposes you go to Venice. You said you were almost in a comfortable situation with Rondolino, years of experience, many mistakes that served you. Nobody teaches you to be a festival director—truly nobody. There's no school. Today it's paradoxically easier—there are many references, many ways to learn that didn't exist before. In the 1980s, festivals in Italy were very few: Venice, Taormina, Pesaro, and then Torino was born, Porretta Terme—festivals could be counted on two hands, perhaps fewer. So there were only four of us doing it: Gianni Rondolino, myself, Roberto Trugliato, who now works at Fuori Orario on television, and Steve Della Casa. We did the festival ourselves—we chose all the films, did the programming, the organization.
Were you great friends among yourselves?
We were great friends, of course. We socialized at work and outside of work, went on vacation together. I rented an apartment with Steve in Claviere for I believe fifteen years during winter for cross-country skiing. But nobody taught you that job, so you had to learn on your own, and often you learn by making mistakes.
And how did Baratta take it when you said no?
Baratta says to me, 'What? I'm offering you the chance to direct Venice, and you say no?' I say, 'Look, no, no, no—because in Turin I do what I want in total autonomy. Maybe I make mistakes, but I get results.' The festival had created an extremely positive reputation, it was a festival of prestige internationally, but above all I worked in total autonomy—nobody told me what to do or set limits or conditions of any kind. So as festival director, I worked in absolute freedom, and I realized this freedom was something rare, precious, and, so to speak, irreplaceable. Going to Venice, which had this terrible reputation, was a risk I didn't want to take—of being crushed by a machine bigger than me.
And then I was expecting my second child, so I said, 'Look, I have other things to think about right now, certainly not about radically changing my life and jeopardizing an adventure whose coordinates I don't know.' He was very clever—he courted me with great courtesy, no real insistence, but calling me repeatedly, proposing we meet in Rome, in Milan, and so on.
Did no one tell you, 'Are you crazy? You're turning down Venice?' Had you talked to anyone about it?
No, I hadn't talked about it with anyone. I hadn't mentioned it even to my professor Gianni Rondolino, who at that time was still president of the festival. It was only after more than a month of Baratta's insistence—I remember we were in Rome, we had come to present that year's Torino Film Festival edition at the Rome press conference, and we were at lunch together. I finally decided to talk to Rondolino about it, and Rondolino said, 'No, you can't give this up—it's the opportunity of a lifetime, you must absolutely accept.'
But what about the festival, what happens? I'll leave the festival. He said, 'Don't worry, we'll surely find another solution. You go to Venice.' So, with this endorsement, which was both moral and practical, I decided to accept this position. I arrived in Venice terrified, by this environment I didn't know, by the dimensions of this festival which were immeasurable compared to the one in Turin. And there I encountered another great stroke of luck. I've been very fortunate in life, I acknowledge it and have no difficulty saying so. I've had a series of lucky breaks.
The first trip I made — as director of Turino, I had relationships with the majority of European and Asian producers because I had frequented that whole area a lot: Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, China. You brought them to Turin for the first time. Exactly. Many Chinese or Hong Kong directors came to Turin for the first time in Italy, etc. But I had never been to America, so I made this first trip to Los Angeles.
My first appointment was at Warner Bros. with the international heads, who took me to lunch inside the studio and said, 'We have a film for Venice.' This was the first trip I made, the first meeting, the first appointment, and the first appointment with a major Hollywood studio. And I said, 'What film is it?' And he told me the new Stanley Kubrick. I couldn't believe my ears. A neophyte, a nerd like I was at that moment, arriving in Los Angeles and being offered to open the Venice Film Festival with the most anticipated film by one of the greatest directors of the moment, Stanley Kubrick.
Which was Eyes Wide Shut. Then naturally what we know happened — after a few months he died. But the film was practically finished, so it arrived in Venice anyway, and we opened the Venice Film Festival with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman on stage, evoking in tears the extraordinary experience of the making of Eyes Wide Shut, with Bernardo Bertolucci, whom I had asked to read a memory of Stanley Kubrick. He gave a wonderful speech, which unfortunately I didn't keep, but somewhere it surely exists and sooner or later I'll recover it, in which he made a great, moving self-criticism, saying: 'All of us cinephiles for years dismissed Stanley Kubrick's cinema because we considered it too cold, too cerebral, too constructed, too intellectualist. We were wrong. Kubrick is a great, great director. His films are something extraordinary. Every one of his films is something extraordinary, innovative, that changed cinema, aesthetics, language, etc.' And it was a beautiful speech.
But did he do it on camera?
Yes, at the time Telepiù was the sponsor of the film festival, so I imagine that perhaps in the Sky archives there should be a recording of this opening ceremony of Venice in 1999 with this beautiful speech by Bertolucci.
It wasn't many years, naturally, the Venice in which Lietta Tornabuoni saved Tomaselli from the police baton blows, but not his knee.
He was picked up and carried away, but it was still a tumult, and it was a festival that — you're right to remember it — was living in an objective state of decline, compared to Cannes and Berlin, compared to festivals that were making their way at that time, like Toronto.
Toronto, certainly, you remembered it. Bringing an American film for the Americans often costs more than a million dollars, much more convenient as a destination, Toronto, right?
It costs much less, and for years and years the Americans bypassed Venice, preferring to go directly to Toronto to do the domestic promotion of the film, etc. And it was only the result of an enormous work of rebuilding relationships and trust that had to be re-conquered for Venice, but which required an enormous investment, both in organizational and economic terms.
Also in existential terms.
