Oscar winning filmmaker Alexander Payne is presiding over the Venice Film Festival’s main competition jury this year, returning for the first time since his Downsizing world premiered on the Lido in 2017.
That time around, spending just 36 hours here, everything was “a blur.” Today, he said he’s reveling in a sort of paradise that only became real yesterday. “I arrived by water taxi to my beautiful hotel. I dropped my bags. Soon, I was seated next to Francis Coppola watching a restoration of a 1928 silent film. And I thought, ‘I’m in heaven’… The only hard part, of course, is deciding, and we’ll figure it out somehow.”
Movies were indeed part of the conversation at the festival’s opening press conference, but the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza soon became the major topic of discussion.
Payne was pressed on his personal views on the role of the industry and whether it needs to take a stronger stance. The Holdovers, Descendants and Sideways filmmaker said he felt “a little bit unprepared for that question. I’m here to judge and talk about cinema. My political views I’m sure are in agreement with many of yours, but as far as my relationship with the festival and what the industry does, I have to think about that for a while to give you a measured response.”
Alexander Payne dodges a question about his stance on Gaza at the #VeniceFilmFestival jury press conference: “I have to think about that for a while to give you a measured response” pic.twitter.com/kr1Pxt7LZI
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Venice Artistic Director Alberto Barbera was also asked to discuss the festival’s stance on the crisis. He said, “We have been asked to turn down invitations to artists. We will not do that. If they want to be at the festival, they will be here. On the other hand, we have never hesitated to clearly declare our huge sadness vis à vis what is happening in Gaza, in Palestine, the death of civilians and especially of children who are victims… of a war that nobody has been able to terminate yet. I think there are no doubts as regards the position of La Biennale on this.”
On the how the outside world might factor into deliberations or discussions during the festival, Payne opined, “Whether we are practicing art or looking at art in any given time, the winds of culture are blowing through us. And so I can’t say how conscious we will be, but certainly on many unconscious levels, those things affect us.”
Concerning the relevance of films today, Payne allowed that he watches “a lot of movies at night, you know, on my stomach,” but that he much prefers to see them “projected in the cathedral of cinema.”
He continued, “I lament that many great movies, both of artistic and political importance, don’t become a larger part of the conversation, certainly a cinematic conversation, because of the means of distribution. I think that maybe I’m just an old guy, I’ve been doing this for 30 years, but as a film lover, it’s typically films which have theatrical release, which become a part of a cinema conversation, of a cultural conversation, and then have some kind of impact. And then comes a question of the impact of a film at any time in history. You know, can a film really change society or culture? I don’t know, doubtful. But at least when we make films which are relevant to the times, we leave a document that someone was thinking about. Did Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, did Chaplin’s Great Dictator prevent World War II or the Holocaust? No, but they are documents that people were aware of at the time… We have those as documents, and as such, we can try to learn from them.”
The Venice Film Festival runs from today through September 6. Joining Payne on the main jury are French director and screenwriter Stéphane Brizé; Italian director and screenwriter Maura Delpero; Romanian director, writer and producer Cristian Mungiu; Iranian director and writer Mohammad Rasoulof; Brazilian actress, writer and screenwriter Fernanda Torres; and Chinese actress Zhao Tao.
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