Cinema has changed again. It happened since its birth. Indeed, it is as if the universe of cinema had exploded under the impetus of an unstoppable force that, putting an end to supposed immutable stability, is giving rise to a configuration in which different and opposing realities coexist. On the one hand, films are becoming smaller and smaller – short or very short – to adapt to new containers: no longer theatres, not even the screens turned on by the streamers’ content, rather the so-called social ones: Instagram, but even more so TikTok and above all YouTube, which recent market surveys indicate as the platform most frequented by young people and video consumers. And from China comes the news that the most significant profits for production companies now come from the concise low-budget films offered on the Internet to the multitudes who spend hours every day on their home-work journeys with their eyes glued to their mobile phone screens.
On the other hand, we see the expansion of running time and traditional narrative conventions. It’s crystal clear that movies are getting longer and longer, reaching and sometimes exceeding three hours. The examples of this time escalation are more and more numerous, to the point of suggesting that we are no longer dealing with exceptions (which have always existed: think of examples such as Gone with the Wind and The Longest Day), but with the start of a process destined to impose a new spectacular parameter.
The 81st Venice Film Festival offers significant examples of this twofold expansive movement, with numerous films that more or less exceed the two-hour mark and four ‘auteur’ series (Alfonso Cuarón, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Thomas Vinterberg and Joe Wright), which, beyond apparent differences in production and content, have in common a stylistic and formal approach of undeniable cinematic imprint and in several cases aspire to a theatrical distribution, albeit limited, before accessing the platform at the origin of their genesis. The unabridged presentation of these four series, ranging in length from Cuarón’s five and a half hours to Sorogoyen’s eight, is a challenge for the audience and a gamble for the Festival. It is a risk worth taking, wishing to pursue the commitment of signalling, if not anticipating, the most significant trends in the cinema universe.
On the other hand, film festivals do not live in a physical and temporal bubble devoid of any relationship with what is happening in the world. Cinema has always been a mirror of contemporary problems, a wide-open window on the ongoing conflicts, unresolved contradictions, insurgent clashes, and unexpected tragedies looming over the tormented planet. Far from representing an illusory and momentary parenthesis in the continuum of recurring breaking news that bedevils our daily lives, cinema offers the opportunity for necessary and irreplaceable insight and reflection.
It is possible to find the major themes of contemporary life in many films of this year’s programme. The explosion of armed conflicts. The premonition of an overwhelming climatic catastrophe. The emergency of the unstoppable migratory phenomena. The growing spread of populist, supremacist and nationalist movements against the fragile equilibrium of traditional democracies. Aware of the responsibilities of a cultural event of global importance, the Festival opts for the reasons of confrontation of different points of view and does not shy away from the polemics that may ensue, certain that only in dialectics and discussion lies the seed of a possible solution to the most fundamental conflicts and contrasts that mark our time.
