Festivals and events

Celluloid Bridge Between Europe and Asia — Venice ’97

An overview of the main film trends manifested at Venice film festival ’97, with a short introductory view into the history of the festival.

Established in 1932, legendary Mostra is the oldest, exclusively film, festival. Its program has suffered frequent changes, trying to satisfy whimsical requests of critics and general public. After the durable direction by Gile Pontecorvo, which has shown signs of tiredness during the last festival years, the new selector Felice Laudadio not only changed the names of old festival programmes, but tried to establish a bridge among the European and Asian cinemas, which left no space for the US blockbusters (that dominated last year). Several trends have been emphasized in this year Mostra: the revival of East European film (Russian Pavel Čukraj Vor; Polish Love Stories by Jerzy Stuhr), East Asian film (impressive Japan film Hana-bi by Takeshi Kitano; Chinese Keep Cool by Zhang Yimou), and the important British contemporary film presented within special retrospective program, with its new important directors and actors. Other Europe did not has much to offer. Except the individual contribution by the funny Italian film Ovosodo by Paolo Virzi, and intelligent Belgian film Nettoyage a sec by Anne Fontaine, other Belgians, French and Italian filmmakers were not up to the occasion. The Americans were present with equally uneven contribution, more impressive being that of Joe Dante (The Second Civil War), and unavoidable Woody Allen (Deconstructing Harry).

Dragan Rubeša