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.
Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey Launch Production House 34North
Executive producers Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey have teamed to launch 34North. The shop opens with a roster which includes accomplished directors Jan Wentz, Ben Nakamura Whitehouse, David Edwards and Mario Feil, as well as such up-and-coming filmmakers as Glenn Stewart and Chris Fowles. Nakamura Whitehouse, Edwards, Feil and Fowles come over from CoMPANY Films, the production company for which Cicero served as an EP for the past nearly five years. Director Wentz had most recently been with production house Skunk while Stewart now gains his first U.S. representation. EP Clancey was freelance producing prior to the formation of 34North. He and Cicero have known each other for some 25 years, recently reconnecting on a job directed by Fowles. Cicero said that he and Clancey “want to keep a highly focused roster where talent management can be one on one--where we all share in the directors’ success together.” Clancey also brings an agency pedigree to the new venture. “I started at Campbell Ewald in accounts, no less,” said Clancey. “I saw firsthand how much work agencies put in before we even see a script. You have to respect that investment. These agency experiences really shaped my approach to production--it’s about empathy, listening between the lines, and ultimately making the process seamless.” 34North represents a meeting point--both literally and creatively. Named after the latitude of Malibu, Calif., where the idea for the company was born, it also embraces the power of storytelling. “34North118West was the first GPS-enabled narrative,” Cicero explained. “That blend of art and technology, to captivate an audience, mirrors what we do here--create compelling work, with talented people, harnessing state-of-the-art... Read More
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