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Venice pays special attention to Rome as the capital’s festival approaches.
by Eric J. Lyman |
The rivalry between the embryonic RomaCinemaFest and its venerable counterpart up the road in Venice is just getting started, but the roots of the rivalry date back more than seven decades.
The creation of the Rome event was announced at last year's Venice festival, and despite obvious friction between the competing events organizers from both sides tried to put a positive spin on the rivalry for months.
Back in July, the festivals even agreed to jointly honor iconic Italian directors Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, and Mario Soldati -- 2006 is the centennial of the birth of all three -- and at a press briefing announcing the joint venture, organizers of both festivals brushed aside talk of a rivalry.
Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, in one of his first official acts in that role, echoed the remarks. "Having two major festivals simply calls more attention to the importance of cinema," Rutelli said at the time. "A rising tide lifts all boats."
But the friendly façade finally fell apart in August, when Rome reportedly broke a pact to keep silent in the week before the 63rd edition of the Venice festival got underway. Instead, it announced a mere 72 hours before Venice began that sultry Australian Nicole Kidman would open the Rome festival on Oct. 13.
Venice artistic director Marco Muller was furious, bad talking Rome's role in an interview with RAI: "I've got no fear of the RomaCinemaFest because they are only screening films that neither [the Festival de] Cannes nor Venice wanted," he said.
Rome co-directors Giorgio Gosetti and Mario Sesti responded in kind, calling Muller's comments "an incredible offense to all cinema and to the extraordinary directors who decided to bring films to Rome." Their statement went on to warn: "Venice should not fear Rome, it should fear its own mistakes."
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Since then, tempers have cooled and Rome appears to be gearing up for an opening unparalleled by the standards of first-year festivals.
But the rivalry between the two events is unlikely to remain calm indefinitely -- at least if history is a guide.
The Venice festival started very humbly in 1932, when a count, eager to draw visitors to Venice during the Great Depression, set up a film projector in the gardens of the Excelsior Hotel on the Lido and announced the creation of what became the world's first film festival.
It didn't take long until Rome wanted in on the action. Italy's strong-armed leader Benito Mussolini decided the festival should be held in the country's capital rather than in a distant outpost like Venice's Lido. The count refused to move the event south, and so Rome set up its own small festival in 1935, but it never caught on and the idea was abandoned. Another Rome festival in 1946 lasted just one year.
But by then, Rome's role had already been cast: in 1937, the nationalistic Mussolini set up Rome's now famous Cinecittà studios -- the birthplace of hundreds of Italian and international films over the decades that followed. Cinecittà meant that until this year the rivalry between Rome and Venice could be termed as being between a city where films are made and one where they are introduced to the world. Now, with the creation of the RomaCinemaFest, the Eternal City is vying to play both roles.
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