|
A great beginning.
Yet again.
by Massimo Amici
|
A successful second edition of the Rome Film Festival boasted a total of 110,000 thousand tickets issued, an incredible number of celebrities and a more functional and organized festival overall. More shows, more venues, more people, more festival. The Business Street also grew, to include a fourth day of buying and selling for film business professionals. My personal favourite improvement at the festival: simultaneous translation in the press conferences.
Now everybody loves coming to Rome, festival or no festival, and Cinema-Festa di Roma is fortunate to have the Eternal City as its main attraction. It provides immediate appeal for audiences, filmmakers, and buyers alike: a key factor that will certainly contribute to Rome's bid at becoming one of the leading players in the worldwide festival circuit.
Festival regulars currently insist that Rome's film programming doesn't match the appeal of the host city; that it doesn't currently have a clear style or artistic mission. Furthermore, I've heard critics say the festival compensates the above shortcoming with big names, big money and one of the largest, if not the largest, red carpets in the world.
Though somewhat true, I feel the "grandness" of Rome's festival infancy is both historically justified, strategic and necessary. Rome is the birthplace of Neorealism and has played a central, historic role in changing and developing cinema in the entire world, inspiring many of today's great directors. And it has the stuff to continue inspiring generations more.
|
|
Robert Redford & Tom Cruise |
An explosive beginning is needed to attract international attention and keep it long enough for things to really get going. Like with any new venture, it's all about changing perception and fighting inertia. The worldwide festival circuit is a crowded place, with set dates and a kind of "routine" set up for audiences, journalists and film professionals alike. You need to be loud and proud to change things.
A new festival can feature a unique program of films for people to see, but without a Tom Cruise or a Francis Ford Coppola present, nobody's going to turn their head and look your way. So starting a festival from scratch often has more to do with awareness than programming. And that's ok, as long as you eventually back up the flash with the films. Rome has started to do that, with more previews than before, more projections and more films from more countries.
In the next few years I too will expect to see a clearer and more unique vision for the festival's programming as it grows past its embryonic stage. I'm confident this will happen. Until then, big names on a big carpet may still have to do a lot of the work in attracting festivalgoers.
|
