You are here: Home > Video > Entertainment

Venice Film Festival: 'Quality not quantity'

: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail CNTV, August 30, 2012

Adjust font size:

Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera is reducing the size of this year's festival and supporting young filmmakers. More recent editions have seen as many as 24 films in competition, and well over 100 screened in all the side events.

Alberto Barbera returned this year to the 69th edition of the Venice Film Festival he directed from 1998-2002 with a pledge to trim down the number of movies screened overall.

Alberto Barbera, Artistic Director, Venice Film Festival said, "Toronto is getting bigger and bigger every year and the same thing for Cannes and Berlin and so on. And I don't like that. It's not a proper way to promote a film and to give each film the same possibility to be fairly seen, fairly promoted. A fair number of films is enough. 60 premieres in the festival is enough."

Chinese Hong Kong director Stephen Fung Tak-lun (2nd R), together with actors Tony Leung Ka-fai (2nd L), Eddie Peng (1st L) and Yuan Xiaochao pose on the red carpet of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Aug. 29, 2012. The 69th Venice International Film Festival opened here late Wednesday. [Xinhua]

This year, a total of 60 films will be shown, 50 of which are world premieres. That's from a pool of 1,459 feature films and 1,772 short films previewed.

Alberto Barbera said, "We were completely open to any kinds of films. The results of this selection process is that we have some big films from well established film makers, some less known film makers."

One such discovery is "Wadja" - the first film to come out of Saudi Arabia.

"The film of Saudi Arabia, which is a country where cinema is simply forbidden, there are not theaters in Saudi Arabia."

The 69th edition of the Venice Film Festival opens on Wednesday and runs for eleven days.

1 2 3 Next