If you're a cinema enthusiast but have never been to the Venice Film Festival, you have no idea how the sections work, how to book films, or what happens every day here at the Lido in Venice.
This is the podcast for you. Welcome to Good Morningia.
I'm Antonio Mascoli, a host and content creator, mainly a cinema educator. I'm Martina Ricca, a digital strategist and content creator. And I'm Mauro Zingarelli, a director and the person on the internet who tells you how your favorite films are made, so you can't watch them with the same peace of mind anymore.
And this is the first Content Creator podcast in collaboration with the Biennale.
So they really asked us, it's not that we're here and hidden and no one knows we're here, it's not something organized by us for us.
No, they asked us, the Biennale asked us, we're here for them, and they incredibly approved us.
Specifically, we will tell you about the Venice Festival day by day, and I already made a mistake, I called it the Venice Festival, which is a terribly ignorant thing.
Actually, the full name is the International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of Venice. The problem, however, arises when the title, the name of the exhibition, is translated into English because it becomes Venice International Film Festival and therefore it is abbreviated with Festival, and so we tend to call it the Venice Festival. And so it's not wrong, it's simply an Italianization.
Are you saving me? Thank you?
It's an Italianization, actually, the English part.
Yes, but why did we decide to make it complicated and call it an exhibition? There's a reason, right? Actually, there is an explanation because it was born as an exhibition, and cinema was the last art to arrive, in 1932, so it makes sense that it's called an exhibition because it was an exhibition, it wasn't born as a competition of films that have to compete for various awards. That came later, and so in Italian we kept the name.
We will do a daily focus on Orizzonti, and here opens another huge chapter, namely the films of the exhibition, excuse me, of the International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of Venice are divided into sections, among which there is this Orizzonti, which is the section we will give a bit more space to. Every day we will delve into one of the films, we will perhaps also have guests, directors, actors depending on the case. Very often, people at home rightly hear mostly about the main competition, right? The one for the Golden Lion. You rightly said a festival is a competition, this is called an exhibition also because there isn't only the competition, there are sections like the out of competition, there's Venice Spotlight, there's the Immersive which is dedicated to those films that use technologies like augmented reality, and then there is naturally also Orizzonti, so you find everything here.
Let's explain the terms.
So the competition is the competition, the competition you win is the Golden Lion which is shaped like a lion, so there's that and then there are all the other secondary awards that we won't list all of them, but anyway there's the Volpi Cup for best performance, there's the Best Director award, those are the ones that get a bit more media attention because it's the main competition.
Yes, we will have a focus instead on Orizzonti, which is, let's say, the section dedicated to new trends in world cinema. It serves to collect those films that are either first or second works, but they are considered still emerging directors who haven't found a large audience yet and therefore need a spotlight to make them noticed, and there are, let's say, films with perhaps more innovative, less ordinary languages, considering also the fact that they often have to compete with names that the audience knows, loves, appreciates, important directors. Think of Danny Boyle, think, if we want to move to Italy, Nanni Moretti, Edoardo De Angelis.
Sorog, this year. Sorog with a film also with a singular title, Faster, because you have to reverse the two initial letters, but anyway the particular thing is that maybe you know you've seen a performance that has the possibility of winning an award, but if you put it in the main competition, maybe that award it won't receive because there's another performance that will end up taking that award, right? It says: 'Ok, this film maybe it's better to go to Orizzonti because there it might get more attention.' So in the work of those who select and who make the program of Venice there is also the thought of where I put things to make sure they are valued at best, which is a thing that gives you a headache.
Returning to the films of the Orizzonti section, which are the ones you're most looking forward to? Well, I'm actually very curious about both the opening film, The Girl with the Leica by Alina Marazz, but also Eclipse, because it follows the story of a little boy who is discriminated against because his father has what in the film they call the gay disease, that is, AIDS. And I'm very curious to see how they managed to stage it all with children, young kids.
Well, I'll avoid saying something false, that there's one specific that I've targeted, because then the point of the Orizzonti section is precisely that, apart from The City of the Living, that is, a lot of stuff that maybe one has never heard of, never seen. And what I can tell you is that last year I saw from the Orizzonti section and On the Road, which was an absurd film that talked about this homosexual relationship within the world of truck drivers in South America, so it was really something you didn't expect. So that's what I'm looking forward to, finding something I don't expect. Sure, I made this really annoying wordplay. Exactly. And instead, Martina, you have a film that you...
Yes, by the way, it's the one you mentioned before, that is, The City of the Living by Eduardo Gabriellini. I would say it's also one of the most anticipated films in general, beyond the Orizzonti section, even compared to the main competition, it's one of the films I've heard the most about because it comes from a very well-known case, first of all because it comes from a book by Nicola La Gioia, City of the Living, which was very talked about when it came out, in 2020. There was also a podcast by Nicola La Gioia that tells this story of Luca Varani, this young 23-year-old boy killed for unknown reasons, in fact it is clearly one of the most anticipated films. Which then, in my opinion, this is always part of that question of positioning of the section, that is, you take a film like this that is particularly talked about and you put it maybe in a section next to films that would normally be less known, and in this way you attract the general audience to a section that might have received a bit less attention. In my opinion, that's also the question.
It seems a bit like what happened with On My Skin.
Yes, On My Skin also opened Orizzonti, and in that case it was also a case, a completely different story, but anyway it started from the same base, so from a very strong case, so it already attracted an audience, so to speak, interested in knowing more. But I would talk about the elephant in the room, namely that today is a typical episode because we haven't seen a film, we're pretending.
Because on September 2nd everything opens today. Then once we've seen the films, another thing we have to wait for is the embargo.
The embargo, the word.
What is the embargo? The embargo is essentially a deadline, where essentially you see a film in the theater, but you can talk about it publicly when the embargo expires. So we will see the films, wait for this famous deadline, and then we will have the opportunity naturally to talk about them with you, to bring them to you, to say what our impressions were.
Yes, but in my opinion they've heard about it, they haven't actually, how to say, realized that it was an embargo, but in my opinion if one follows many influencers or creators on social media, very often you hear 'I can't talk about it', which is not just a way to create hype, it's literally a sort of contract sometimes signed, sometimes not, but anyway a tacit agreement where you actually can't talk.
Why is the embargo necessary? Because actually the embargo expires when there is the premiere, but it's the premiere open to the public, not the premiere open to the press. The press premiere is usually in the morning, like at 9 or the day before, even at 7 PM and 9 PM. And so the press often sees the film before there is the premiere, the one with the actors, with the red carpet, etc., for obvious reasons.
Yes, exactly, to write about it, to do reviews, to write in advance and at the exact moment when the official premiere begins, the embargo expires and you can publish your podcast in our case.
Yes, this is to give the press time to form their own ideas, to prepare their pieces and not to sleep because the press friends are the ones with the most absurd schedules, but we'll talk about that.
But because in Venice if you sleep, that's already another thing we have to remember.
Well, for now it's the first day, so it's been slept. We'll update you in the coming days how it will go. We'll do a sleep-o-meter every day, we'll analyze how many hours we slept.
And they judge us. You frame us well from up close and say how much we slept.
By the way, I would really like to ask how much our first guest sleeps, who we'll see shortly, and I leave it to you the honor of introducing him, the great artistic director, the one who knows everything and can do everything, who naturally chooses where to place the various films. We are clearly talking about Alberto Barbera with whom we are going to talk as anticipated. Today we are here with Alberto Barbera who is the artistic director of Venice and above all the person who made Venice possible. Greatness here to you. We are now going with all the questions we have on this work which is directing a huge festival.
And I start immediately with a doubt that in general is more about the state of cinema. There is a lot of talk in recent years about how the attention threshold of people is dropping, especially due to very frequent use of social media. You are in a privileged situation because for years you have seen the trends of cinema arriving. So I ask you, have you actually noticed an acceleration in the pace of films for this fear or on the contrary maybe they go against the trend, how does it relate to new cinema?
Look, there's everything, it goes from one extreme to the other, in the sense that there are two big trends today in contemporary cinema. One is towards the creation of micro-films that are called vertical films that last a minute and are connected to each other like a story that continues and that young people, especially abroad, the phenomenon was born in China, then spread to the United States, is arriving here too on social media, on TikTok or on platforms like YouTube etc., which is a singular thing, right? And people walking, going on the subway, on buses, etc., see these very short videos and they hook you, right, because the story doesn't end, it continues, etc., and so it becomes a very rapid but constant consumption over time. On the opposite side, there is a trend in contemporary cinema, the one destined also for commercial theaters etc., to lengthen the times. Many films now last much more than 2 hours, 2 and a half, 3 hours, some even four, not to mention documentaries this year we have in Venice that are river-like, but those are destined for platforms, so it's another story. Let's talk about films that go to theaters. Even in films that go to theaters, the duration today is becoming, how to say, anomalous compared to a standard that for 100 years more or less had survived. Films lasted between 90 and 120 minutes with very few exceptions. Gone with the Wind lasted 3 hours. But clear? I mean, usually that was the duration that allowed exhibitors to do four screenings a day in the afternoon and evening and people were used to this standard, to these rhythms. Today with films that last 3 hours, 3 and a half hours, apart from disrupting the programming rhythms also for festivals because a festival that is organized for horizontal time slots, inserting films that last 3 hours becomes very complicated.
But there is also another fact, namely that people, especially those who go to the cinema little and who consume on platforms the products that are now offered in exorbitant quantities, are much more used to watching TV series than films and series naturally force you to watch episodically, but few are those who watch a single episode and then wait for the next episode the following week, right? There is this phenomenon that has an English name that I don't remember which consists of seeing maybe spending all Sunday watching all 10 episodes of a series and consuming them in one go. Exactly, this thing here. You understand? So, this changes the habits of the audience obviously on one hand, but it also changes the way of telling stories, of building films, of thinking and of scripting the events that one wants to narrate. Many film directors then have had the experience of TV series and have discovered a freedom that they didn't have before, before they had to synthesize a story to fit within the fateful 90-120 minutes. With the editor who said it's too long, you have to cut, you have to reduce, you have to accelerate etc. And now they have discovered that they can take their time, which maybe also helps to deepen the characters, the characters, the narrative structure, etc., giving them a dimension, if you want, more literary than cinematic, right? Yes, so then when they return to cinema they want to preserve this freedom in some way, so it becomes very difficult. It's a battle for producers to convince directors to cut.
Of course, the director has to cut for the audience, but the director is used to... The audience, the director would always like to make it longer, right? Possible. The producer tells him, 'Look, it's too long, then there are repetitions, there are redundancies. Even if you synthesize it, you dry it out a bit, sometimes it's much better.' Now I'll confess something that maybe I shouldn't say, but very often we see films where we notice there are long stretches and the film would benefit enormously if it were cut and reduced and... well, with the directors I know, with the producers with whom I have a relationship of trust and esteem, etc., I allow myself to say, 'Look, the film like this is not good, it's too long, there are repetitions, there are redundancies, if you cut it, if you convince the director to reduce it, you all benefit. We all benefit, not only in practical terms, but also in qualitative terms, right? In the end it acquires a remarkable solidity. Not always, obviously I achieve the goal, but sometimes yes. And I must say, I can't name names because it would be embarrassing. I even managed to convince a director who had never accepted in his entire life to cut even a minute of a film, so and then he thanked me and this is the funny thing because at first they don't want to cut because they feel they're cutting a piece of their own flesh, you understand? Then, but when they realize that having cut the film it has improved and is well received, then they change their mind and often thank me.
