Italian director Ermanno Olmi received the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion for lifetime achievement on Friday.
The 77-year-old director won the Golden Lion at Venice for “La Leggenda Del Santo Bevitore (The Legend of the Holy Drinker)” and the Palme D’Or at Cannes for “The Tree of Wooden Clogs (L’Albero Degli Zoccoli).”
During a press conference, Olmi recalled being inspired by the Italian neorealism of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica.
He said audiences didn’t know how to react to Rossellini’s postwar masterpieces “Roma Citta Aperta (Open City)” and “Germania Anno Zero (Germany Year Zero)” because the movies made them too uncomfortable.
“The cinema of Rossellini, of Di Sica … is a cinema of the honest men of neorealism, one that has the value of allowing you to recognize yourself on the screen,” Olmi said.
Olmi also said he has seen signs of a renaissance in Italian filmmaking in the last few years, citing films such as “il Divo,” a lively portrait of former Premier Giulio Andreotti by Paolo Sorrentino, which was honored at Cannes this year.
“Cinema is beginning again to be aware of being an instrument of civility,” Olmi said.
It was announced Thursday that “Tierra Y Pan (Land and Bread)” by Mexican director Carlos Armella had won the top prize in the festival’s short film competition. The 8-minute film deals with hunger in a desert landscape.
The jury cited Armella’s capacity to “tell in (a) few minutes and in one space a dramatic tale of misery and loneliness.”
Armella said that the most difficult part in making the film was keeping it simple.
“The goal was to provoke from the audience the feeling of having witnessed a very hard, tragic moment but without ever actually having seen it,” Armella said in a statement.
The 30-year-old director studied scriptwriting in Mexico and filmmaking at the London Film School. He co-directed and edited “Toro Negro,” which won awards at the San Sebastian and the Havana film festivals, as well as “Born Without,” which won a prize at the Mexico City International Contemporary Festival.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More
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