09/01/2012

Alberto Barbera is the new director of the Venice International Film Festival for the next four-year term. Barbera, who has already headed the Festival in the past, from 1999 to 2001, succeeds Marco Müller, who had entered a course of collision with the president of the Biennale Foundation, Paolo Baratta. The new director has asked the Foundation’s board of directors for the festival’s logistics to be redeveloped, for the introduction of a light market and the creation of permanent activities which would see the involvement of young artists.

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During the same days as the nomination for Venice, the mayor of Rome Gianni Alemanno and the governor of Lazio Renata Polverini reached an agreement on the nomination of Marco Müller to director of the Rome Film Festival to replace Piera Detassis (whose mandate expired on December 31). A solution which has unleashed several complaints against the breaching of rules. The association 100autori and the AFIC- Italian association of film festivals have complained against the invasive attitude of politics vis-à-vis cinema. Any decision has therefore been postponed. The mayor of Rome has confirmed trust in the president of the Rome Film Festival, Gian Luigi Rondi, who will serve as artistic director in the interim until the end of his mandate, when the Film Foundation’s new board of directors will be nominatated, with a new president who will have to appoint a director.

January 13 foresees a meeting of the Film Foundation’s members (Region of Lazio, Municipality and Province of Rome, Chamber of Commerce and Fondazione Musica) where participants will discuss the problems facing the festival, including the negative balance with which the 2011 edition was closed, with a loss of €1,350,000.

(Translated from Italian)