Unlike previous years who favored Oscar winning works, this year’s Golden Lion Award was won by French female director Audrey Diwan’s "Happening", while Jane Campion won the best director with "Canine Power" . Even in the eyes of veteran movie enthusiasts, these are two out-and-out unpopular movies. Some commentators keenly pointed out that after the Venice Film Festival inevitably embraced Hollywood, it still tried to maintain the unique aesthetic preferences and independence of European films. This year's awards result is not so much an upset, as it is an attempt to maintain a balance.
Get rid of the "Hollywood Europe sub-dock"
After years of reforms, the Venice Film Festival now has six major units: the main competition unit, the horizon unit, the non-competitive screening unit, the Sconfini unit, the Venice Day unit and the VR competition unit. Among them, the main competition unit and the horizon unit are the most concerned and the most important. They are also the two official competition units of the Venice Film Festival. The former is the main track of the film festival and directly selects a series of important film festival awards such as the Golden Lion Award, Silver Lion Award, Jury Award, Best Actor Award, and Special Jury Award; the latter focuses on encouraging film experimentation and Innovation, capturing the future trends and trends of international films, is the stage for new directors to gallop.
Due to the epidemic restricting the media's exit, coupled with the few short-listed Chinese films, this Venice Film Festival did not arouse much attention and response on the simplified Chinese Internet. However, the media in Europe and the United States has received great attention. Although the epidemic in Italy is not optimistic, the grand scene of the film festival is almost the same as before the epidemic. Including the media, guests and industry professionals, a total of 10,300 people participated in the festival this year. Last year there were only 6,000 people. In 2019 before the epidemic, there were 12,500 people. This success is due to the fact that the organizers and the public have made considerable progress in preventing and adapting to the epidemic. At the same time, the film festival organizers have performed well and maximized the value of participating Hollywood stars for publicity.
There are 21 works in the main competition unit, and most of the main creators are not topical. However, the organizers intend to put Hollywood star participation in the pre-film festival promotion, such as "The Power of Dogs" starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Christine Dunst, and "Stuart" starring Kristen Stewart. "Daughter in the Darkness" starring Olivia Coleman and Dakota Johnson. The star-studded red carpet and topical celebrities naturally gathered a high degree of popularity, so that as soon as the film festival opened, there was enough media exposure. This film festival opens on September 1, allowing these big-name stars with tight schedules to show their faces at the opening and leave without crowding them to the Toronto Film Festival, which opens on September 9, and avoiding direct contact with the latter. compete.
In the middle and late stages of the film festival, relatively unpopular works in the main competition units appeared one after another, the stars inevitably dimmed, and the organizers arranged many stars full of topics. For example, the miniseries "Marriage Life" co-starred by Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac premiered in Venice. This pair of friends who are also well-known actors for many years also staged a pro-armpit show on the red carpet. The intimate drama immediately detonated the topic of social media. Another example is "The Final Duel" directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Judy Comer, which brought a small climax-in fact, the organizing committee is in It was announced in August that Mr. Lei was awarded the "Filmmaker Honor Award" in recognition of his special contribution to the modern film industry, which also attracted the attention of the topic in advance.
The artistic director of the film festival Alberto Barbera admitted in an interview that the festival's success far exceeded expectations, not only because of the high-quality films, but also because of the presence of many stars. But from the perspective of the final awards, Hollywood movies have become a escort. The Chong Austrian biopic "Spencer" starring "Little K" Kristen Stewart missed the award. Another American film, "The Card Counter" starring Oscar Isaac, was also uncollected.
The highly personal female film "What Happens" won the Golden Lion Award. The film is adapted from the autobiographical novel of the same name by the famous French writer Anne Aino. It presents the physical and mental trauma of abortion to women.
The highly personal female film "What Happens" won the Golden Lion Award. The film is adapted from the autobiographical novel of the same name by the famous French writer Anne Aino. It presents the physical and mental trauma caused by abortion to women. There are three abortion scenes in the whole film. In order to express this extreme physical pain, the film uses bold images to present it, so that a critic at the screening scene fainted and an ambulance was called. This is certainly not a commercial film with high public acceptance. The other two Italian art films also won three awards.
This year’s situation is quite different. In 2016, "Arrival" and "City of Philharmonic", "The Shape of Water" and "Three Billboards" in 2017, "Rome" and "Favorite" in 2018, and "Joker" in 2019 "Marriage Story", "A Place of Nowhere" in 2020, etc. The award list of the Venice Film Festival and the Oscars overlap so much that the Venice Film Festival is regarded as the most important vane of the Oscars season. One, nicknamed "Hollywood Europe Sub-Docking Station".
Centennial Venice
Judging from the evolution of the Venice Film Festival, getting close to Hollywood is just a short-lived phenomenon in the past two decades. Deeply rooted in the local Italian traditions, the pursuit of one's own artistry is the inexhaustible inherent characteristic of the Centennial Venice Film Festival.
At the end of the 19th century, the art of film originated in Europe and quickly developed vigorously in Italy, which has a strong artistic atmosphere. At the beginning of the 20th century, Italian cinema entered a short golden period. In 1913, when world cinema was still in its infancy, Italy The annual output of the film industry has reached 497 films. Italian filmmakers invented a mobile camera, which broke through the limitations of fixed lenses and made a breakthrough contribution to the development of film technology.
After the outbreak of the First World War, the domestic political situation was turbulent, and the Italian film industry fell into crisis. In the face of internal and external troubles, the Italian film industry began to rescue itself. More than 20 film companies formed the Italian Film Association and proposed to hold film screenings at the world-renowned art exhibition-the Venice Biennale. On August 6, 1932, more than 20 films from 7 countries were shown in a hotel on Lido Island in the water city, which opened the curtain of the Venice Film Festival and became the world's earliest film festival. It is 14 years before the Cannes Film Festival and 19 years before the Berlin Film Festival.
Like the motherland of Italy, the Venice Film Festival was deeply involved in the war in the first half of the twentieth century. The successful establishment of the film festival was inseparable from the support of the Mussolini government. Solini Cup". It was not until after World War II that the film festival began to reshape its own style, laying the foundation for the judgment of pursuing humanistic care, advocating freedom and equality, and raising the banner of Italian neo-realism. In the 1960s and 1970s, the film festival's influence greatly increased, and it truly became a world-class film festival. The best films at the film festival continue to emerge. Classics such as "The Big Dipper", "Red Desert", and "The Beauty of the Day" successively appeared and won prizes at the Venice Film Festival.
In the 1970s, the Venice Film Festival was closed for many years due to domestic political reasons. After the silence, the opportunity to revive again has been missed, and many similar film festivals are already well matched.
The Venetian films in the 1980s began to take the lead in accepting and discovering female directors and female films, and their tendency to caring for humanity became more and more obvious before opening up the industry atmosphere.
In the 1990s, in the face of the strong invasion of Hollywood commercial films, the Venice Film Festival held high the banner of "de-Hollywood". In 2001, the slogan of the 58th Venice International Film Festival was "Down with Hollywood imperialism!" In 2003, the slogan of the Venice Film Festival was "The 60th Anniversary of Declaring War on Hollywood".
However, the scene of the Venice Film Festival at this time is no longer. On the one hand, commercial films and entertainment are sweeping the film industry, and the position of typical European literary and artistic films is shrinking day by day. On the other hand, various film festivals have emerged one after another, positioning or being close to Venice, such as the old European Cannes Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival, as well as rising stars Montreal Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Tokyo Film Festival and Rome Film Festival.
Poor and thinking change, the Venice Film Festival finally ushered in an alternative chairman-Marco Muller. Unlike the tradition of adhering to the European art standard, Muller gave the green light to Hollywood movies. For example, of the 22 competition films in the 64th edition, there are 8 films with Hollywood touches. Being too close to Hollywood has made Marco Mueller criticized. In 2012, the new chairman Alberto Barbara immediately changed his course after taking office, frequently awarding important awards to high-quality niche movies. Until 2013 and 2014, the Hollywood films "Gravity" and "Birdman" were the opening films of the Venice Film Festival, which brought a huge amount of discussion to the film festival. Since then, the Venice Film Festival has swung onto another one. The way to get close to Hollywood.
For the century-old Venice Film Festival, how to maintain a delicate balance between adhering to its own artistic pursuit and leveraging the momentum of commercial films is still a road to be explored.
Chinese-language movies, the ups and downs of the water city
This year's Chinese-language film failed to enter the main competition unit in Venice. The "Single Seed" in Asia is "Doomsday 2" from the Philippines. The actor John Akila won the best actor for this film. In the Horizon section, there is a "Waterfall" directed by Zhong Menghong from Taiwan, China, and the young director Chen Guan's "Deep Sky" was nominated for the Venice Day section.
Chinese-language films once had a time when they shined in Venice. For a long time, the Venice Film Festival was the first stop for Chinese-language films to enter the international stage, discovering and achieving many world-class actors and directors.
In 1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien's "City of Sadness" won the Golden Lion Award. As the first Chinese film to embrace the Venice Film Festival, Taiwan's new film movement has also entered international horizons. Followed by the fifth and sixth generations of directors from mainland China, Zhang Yimou won the Silver Lion Award for "Raise the Red Lantern" in 1991, and Hou Xiaoxian was named "Producer." Since then, Venice has become Zhang Yimou's blessed land. In the following year, he took "A Lawsuit in Qiuju" and won the Golden Lion Award, and Gong Li was also named the Queen of the Golden Lion. In 1999, Zhang Yimou won the Golden Lion Award again with "No One Less". As the only Chinese director to win the Golden Lion twice, the status of "International Strategy" has been unshakable. During the same period, directors and actors from both sides of the strait, such as Jiang Wen, Xia Yu, and Cai Mingliang, received awards in Venice.
In 2001, the slogan of the 58th Venice International Film Festival was "Down with Hollywood imperialism!" In 2003, the slogan of the Venice Film Festival was "60 Anniversary of Declaring War on Hollywood".
In the 21st century, in 2005, 2006, and 2007, Chinese directors won three Golden Lion Awards in a row.
In the nearly 25 years between 1989 and 2014, 20 Chinese-language films won the main awards of the Venice Film Festival. Among them, there are 12 award-winning films in the mainland, 5 in Hong Kong, and 3 in Taiwan.
The golden years of Chinese-language films in Venice almost coincided with the tenure of Marco Muller's chairmanship. He not only opened his doors to Hollywood, but was also an "old friend" of Chinese filmmakers. During his tenure, a large number of Chinese films have entered Venice one after another, attracting the attention of international film circles, and the artistic value and cultural image of Chinese films have also been appreciated and recognized. Mark's contribution to Bole is beyond doubt, so much so that domestic media praised: "For decades, he has built a road from Beijing to Venice like a road builder in ancient Rome." After Mark left office, China's film market With the continuous expansion, the total box office has become the world's first, and the quality of movies has been continuously improved. Since then, no one has been on the podium in Venice.
Of course, there are reasons for the transformation of personnel changes at the Venice Film Festival, and more importantly, the maturity of the domestic film market and the overall style of film production. Under the guidance of marketization, commercial films have become the mainstream of domestic films and the audience’s aesthetics With the standards of film production becoming closer to Hollywood, there is not much market for independent, low-cost, art films favored by European film festivals. In addition, domestic directors' catering to the aesthetics of European film festivals is also fading.
As early as 2014, the chairman of the film festival Alberto Barbera said in an interview, "There are more and more Chinese films, but there are fewer and fewer films suitable for film festivals like ours. Now it is obvious that Chinese filmmakers have happened. Change, mainly to produce popular films for local audiences. Technically speaking, these films are very exciting, comparable to films made in any other part of the world, but the content of the films is not suitable for going abroad. "The
words are still in your ears, Venice Films The festival’s aesthetic preferences have also undergone major changes, the tolerance for commercialization has greatly increased, and the maturity of domestic films has also greatly increased. It is not an unexpected thing if Chinese films are to praise the Golden Lion again.