Alessandro Borghi
Since I have been doing this job, I have never met anyone like Gianni Amelio. He has been the fuel for the whole creative process. Gianni holds you accountable to a choice and makes you part of the process. He has a way of making cinema that I don’t see so much around anymore because we are invaded by numbers, platforms, haste and judgments. Gianni Amelio made me remember the beauty of cinema.
Gianni Amelio
I don’t think, I feel things in my gut. I don’t start from ideas put on the table, the ones that are talked about because they are current and ‘pull’. I do the opposite. War images are worn out, we see too many of them on television. This film is much more than a war film. It is a film about war. Which must be seen in a movie theater, the temple of cinema enjoyment.
Gabriel Montesi
Gianni taught me so much. Every morning he would give me a handmade drawing with the direction of the scene and every morning he would change something. Cinema is a work that saves you if you do it together, if there are scraps, if it is alive, if it is silent. It has to burn. And this film was always moving.
Federica Rosellini
Battlefield has two preponderant natural elements: ice and fire. In front of the seemingly inviolable, perfect body of water, there was a bubbling of lava and desires to escape. All our characters are running from something, even if they don’t know it.
To Bellocchio the Robert Bresson Award
The 25th Robert Bresson Prize awarded by the Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo and the Rivista del Cinematografo went to Marco Bellocchio. “At my age, and with a long career behind me,” said the master of our cinema, ”I live with detachment the awards, but not in this case: Robert Bresson, in fact, has been for me an example of consistency throughout his long artistic journey, an inspiration for his ability to not accept compromises for his art. Bellocchio is at Venice 81 with His medium-length film If I May Allow Myself – Chapter II, which was created as a (very low-budget) divertissement on the sidelines of the Bobbio Festival and involves actors dear to him such as Fabrizio Gifuni, Barbara Ronchi, Filippo Timi, Fausto Russo Alesi, Piergiorgio Bellocchio and others such as Edoardo Leo. “Never would I have thought of bringing this little thing to Venice,” he said, ”which, of course, we make with care. It’s also an opportunity for me to discover new, very good actors, like Leo. There will also be the third and final chapter.” Bellocchio also confirmed that he is “now ready” to start shooting his new endeavor, the TV series on the Tortora case.
Sold out for Conversations with Piovani, Comencini and Lelouch
“The relationship between music and cinema has changed over time: before, people recorded following the images, today they do it on a shared idea, but without seeing them. And that changes everything.” This was revealed yesterday by Oscar winner Nicola Piovani during the Conversation held together with Cristina Comencini under the auspices of the Biennale and Cartier for the cycle The art and craft of cinema, in a sold-out Match Point Arena.
Piovani signs the music for Comencini’s new film, Il treno dei bambini: “I am proud of him,” said the director. “His music has survived the films for which it was born. He has built an artistic path that goes beyond the films.”
“I always look,” Piovani said again, ”for the personality of the work that I have to translate into music, stripping it of my own. The drive for me comes from the emotionality of the events, from the narrative rhythm. My task is to accompany that poetic direction, without counteracting it.”
In the afternoon, the protagonist of the Biennale and Cartier Conversations was French director Claude Lelouch, who will be in the Official Selection tomorrow with Finalement: “Melody,” he said, “speaks to my heart, to the essential, to what I want to convey. The right music has the power to move emotions, which are the protagonists of our lives.”
Alessandra Farro
In audiovisual, more managers are on the rise
It was discussed at the ITTV International Forum: “But in the arts, women are struggling to make up the gap.”
The importance of female figures is growing in a world, that of film and TV, that has always been male-dominated. The occasion to talk about this was a panel at the ITTV International Forum & Tech in Entertainment, which was attended yesterday by Sonia Rovai, Ceo Wildside, Anna Maria Morelli, Ceo of The Apartment, Maria Grazia Saccà, Ceo of Titanus Production, Chiara Sbarigia, President of Cinecittà, Maria Pia Ammirati, director of Raifiction, Nicole Morganti, Head of local originals Southern Europe Amazon Studios. Without wanting to point the finger at men, the speakers agreed that the presence of women has grown in organizational roles, “but in the artistic field we still struggle to make up the gap.” The future looks positive, although one cannot let one’s guard down.
Tiziana Leone
