Curation is an essential function of film festivals, according to Venice Competition jury president Julianne Moore.
“Curation matters so much,” said Moore, speaking at the opening press conference for the 2022 festival. “Venice is people gathering this extraordinary work for us all to discover.”
The US actress described her first experience of curation, through her local cinema as a 10-year-old in Juneau, Alaska, where she saw John Cassavetes’ 1971 film Minnie And Moskowitz.
Moore said her reaction was, “What is this? What is this world out there? How do I fit in? That is the most important part of filmmaking, of being in films. And that’s what I so appreciate about coming to a place like this – that there has been this tremendous curation and an opportunity to learn.”
Fielding several questions about her position as jury president, Moore joked, “Everybody has to dress alike, that’s my rule. We’re all going to wear the same thing and eat at the same time.”
She then referenced her first visit to Venice in the 1980s when working on a US TV show, saying “If I had known then I would be the head of the jury at the Venice film festival, I would have fallen in the canal.”
“It really is a collective - I don’t know that I’m the head of anything. I’m a figurehead,” said Moore.
Alongside Moore at the conference were La Biennale president Roberto Cicutto, festival artistic director Alberto Barbera, Moore and Horizons jury president Isabel Coixet. The remaining jury members of both the Competition and Horizons juries were sat in the front rows of the audience, but did not take to the stage.
Moore’s fellow Competition jurors are French filmmaker Audrey Diwan, who won the Golden Lion last year for Happening; filmmakers Leonardo Di Costanzo, Mariano Cohn and Rodrigo Sorogoyen; actress Leila Hatami; and author and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro.
Michelangelo Frammartino, head of the Luigi de Laurentis debut feature jury, was absent as he was travelling from yesterday’s German launch of his film The Hole, which debuted at Venice last year. He will arrive in Venice this afternoon.
Ticketing troubles
Press and industry delegates have expressed dissatisfaction at the new Vivaticket platform, which has saw delays of over an hour on the first booking session on Sunday, August 28.
“The platform works,” said Barbera, responding to these issues, which improved by the second ‘booking window’ on Tuesday morning. “It had a bottleneck right at the beginning because of everybody connecting at the same time – the system crashes. We hope to be able to reduce the waiting times that will enable everybody to book - as happened yesterday. From 8.30am yesterday nobody had any more problems booking.”
The ticketing issues last year were “worse”, according to the director. “The situation was critical for several days; we had to wait a whole weekend before it started working properly,” he said.
Noah Baumbach’s White Noise opens the festival this evening – one of several Netflix films at the festival. Moore said discussions around streaming platforms versus theatrical releases are separate from the artistic concerns of the jury.
“So often the discussion around the future of cinema ends up being a discussion that’s really more commercial,” said the actress. “What’s most important is what continues to be made – how are we able to ingest it, observe it, live with it.
“How we live is constantly changing; but art doesn’t change. That’s what Venice is all about – an opportunity to see this unbelievable work.”
She added that she finds it “incredibly gratifying” to watch non-English language films, “because it allows me to really look at behaviour,” which is “what makes my heart beat faster.”
Venice Film Festival runs from August 31 to September 10.
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