By Nicole Winfield
ROME (AP) --The Venice Film Festival, the first major in-person cinema showcase of the COVID-19 era, is requiring participants to wear face masks during screenings and take a coronavirus test if they are arriving from outside Europe.
According to guidelines published Thursday, fans and the general public will be kept away from the red carpet during the Sept. 2-12 festival, and movie-goers will have to buy tickets and reserve seats online to ensure every other seat is left vacant.
Nine gates set up at various points around the Venice Lido will take temperatures of movie-goers and media, and stars will have transport and red carpet arrivals arranged by festival organizers to prevent crowds from forming even within official delegations.
Festival-goers attending indoor events will be tracked to guarantee contact tracing if necessary.
The film festival will be the first in-person movie event since the pandemic began and it is one of the first major international events that Italy is hosting after becoming the onetime COVID-19 epicenter in Europe. After getting infections under control with a strict, 10-week national lockdown that ended in May, Italy is now dealing with a rebound in cases as a result of summer vacation travel.
The Toronto and New York film festivals that follow Venice will be largely virtual this year, and the Telluride festival has been reborn as a drive-in series in Los Angeles.
In Italy, movie-goers must wear face masks to enter movie theaters but can remove them once seated. Biennale, organizers however, are requiring masks indoors and out as well as throughout the screenings.
In addition, anyone arriving from outside Europe's open-border Shengen area must take a virus test before arriving and will be tested again courtesy of the Biennale once in Venice, the guidelines said.
Biennale organizers said the guidelines were worked out with local health care officials.
Avid completes acquisition of Wolftech
Avid®, known for software solutions for professional media production, has completed the acquisition of Wolftech Broadcast Solutions, a leader in cloud-based multiplatform news planning, production and publishing solutions.
The acquisition enables Avid to combine its digital-first, end-to-end media solution with Wolftech’s expertise in story-centric workflow management. News organizations will be able to increase efficiency and accelerate story delivery through enhanced remote collaboration and multiplatform amplification.
Avid CEO Wellford Dillard stated, “Wolftech is unquestionably on the leading edge of where the industry is going, and this acquisition demonstrates Avid’s commitment to transform news, sports, and live production workflows. We are delighted to welcome Wolftech into the Avid family.”
Wolftech CEO Arne Berven added, “We were focused on finding a partner that could accelerate the adoption of our platform globally. We explored a number of possibilities, but when we talked to Avid, we knew it was the right match.”
The closing of the acquisition follows Avid’s announcement on October 7 that the company had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Wolftech.
With this acquisition, Avid deepens the integration between the two toolsets while continuing to embrace an open approach in partnering with a wide range of media production tools and newsroom systems. Existing Wolftech customers will benefit from Avid’s global scale for customer support and professional services.
Ian Axton, head of production operations for ITV News, said, “As a customer of both Avid and Wolftech we’re excited about the benefits this acquisition will bring to our users and our business. Wolftech has transformed... Read More