During the Venice Film Festival, Universal Film & Television Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Gaia Furrer, who was appointed the Artistic Director for Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori (one of their independent sidebars) in 2020.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you tell me a little about your role in the organization?
Gaia Furrer (GF): I was appointed Artistic Director four years ago, and it was the first year of COVID. So, my first year was quite challenging. After three years, it’s the first year we are back to a proper film festival experience :theatres are full, no masks and no tests required. All film delegations are finally allowed to come to the festival. I’m very happy because it’s the first year I can live as an Artistic Director the whole experience of the festival.
(UM): Do you have a definition for a good movie?
(GF): Yes and no. Almodovar when he was president of the Cannes jury said, “I will do my best to be completely subjective.” It’s not an objective thing, a film. I can like it and you can dislike it. So first of all, there’s not something that is good for everybody. For us, I mean for Giornate’s committee, a good film is a film by a filmmaker who dares, in terms of language, but also doesn’t forget that there’s an audience. We like films that can talk with an audience but are trying to do their best to let the audience have a cinematic experience and we do like to have a bunch of first features (at least 3-4) because we do like to support young filmmakers. This is one of our priorities, not our only priority because we are not the Critics’ Week, but it’s something that we take into consideration. And we also take into consideration the geographical window because we like to have a spectrum. We like the festival to be a window on the world.
(UM): I imagine you have programmers, so is programming a collective decision?
(GF): It’s quite a collective decision. We get more than 1,000 films, so we have a group of volunteers who preselect films by watching them and sending us their comments. We watch all the films but if a film has been recommended by two or three volunteers, we see that film as a priority. And then there are consultants. Consultants also suggest films. And then there’s a group of five programmers. So, I don’t see all 1,000 films, I see the bunch of priorities. I see the bunch of the films the group of Giornate recommends.
(UM): And is it good or bad that you’re happening at the same time as the Venice Film Festival?
(GF): It’s happening at the same time because we are independent but we are part of the Venice Film Festival. It’s really like it happens between the Directors’ Fortnight and the Cannes Film Festival. Giornate degli Autori is younger than Director’s Fortnight but the section was born and built up with the same goal. We are promoted and supported by the directors’ guild associations. Since day one, the Giornate was born during the Venice Film Festival, thanks to the Venice Film Festival. There is a complicity between the festival and ourselves. Of course, we take advantage of that, we take advantage of using the beautiful theaters of the main Venice Film Festival, so we are helped in many ways. Of course, talking about films, there’s a competition between the sections. But apart from that, apart from a very healthy and physiological competition, we only have advantages from being in the frame of the Venice Film Festival.
(UM): And do you have any quotas for race, gender, or geography?
(GF): I wouldn’t say quota, but of course we are careful. For me it’s important, vital, crucial, to have diversity and to represent the films made by women, to represent the queer community, to represent countries whose films are not represented very much and so I wouldn’t talk about quota but I would talk about a need that I have as an Artistic Director and the group shares the need with me.
(UM): And in terms of controversial filmmakers, like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, would you accept their films?
(GF): I would see their films and then I would decide.
(UM): Do you get your films from distributors or independent submissions?
(GF): Both. We receive many independent submissions. Sometimes we receive films directly from the directors, sometimes we receive them from big production or sales companies. We receive any kind of film and we don’t need to select a film with a sales agent attached. We are very free in this sense.
(UM): I had a conversation a few weeks ago with the Artistic Director of Viennale and she mentioned your festival.
(GF): Really?
(UM): Yeah, she said it is one of the places that she was looking very carefully for new movies and she was very happy with it. I’m curious about your relationship with other festivals.
(GF): I’m so happy she said that because I admire her a lot. There are many festivals I love but I cannot select films from other festivals because Giornate requires World Premieres films only. But there are many festivals with film markets like Cannes, like Berlin, so I’m very happy to attend all the film markets and these are always very good occasions where we can pick projects. However, I think that the relationship between programmers and the support between programmers is very important.
(UM): Can you speak about the 27 Times Cinema?
(GF): It’s a project that the previous Artistic Director, Giorgio Gosetti, created in 2010, 13 years ago. It’s a project made together with the European Parliament’s LUX Prize and Europa Cinema. Every year we select 27 young cinephiles, film lovers, who want to be future filmmakers, film critics, artistic directors, and whatever. But they are all film lovers. And each one of them comes from a different European country. So, there are 27 for 27 countries in Europe. There were 28 before Brexit, now they are 27. And we select them, we ask them to send us the films they like, to send us essays about films, so we know them beforehand. We get to know them in the months before leading up to Venice. We don’t know them personally, but through their works, through their critiques, through their essays, through the interviews we have with them. It’s not something that I created, but I’m very happy to carry this heritage because I think it’s a great jury. It’s a great jury, and it’s a great way to make the films close to the young people. In Giornate, we don’t have only films, we have so many things around. We have master classes, and we have meetings with cinema personalities. It’s a very young section in this way, and having a jury of young people is an additional challenge. When we select a film, we always ask, “Would the youth like this film or not?” And it’s very difficult to predict the taste of young people because we are not young anymore. I’m not young anymore, and so I need them to help me understand and discover what young people like or don’t like. I learn a lot from our jury.
(UM): You talked about diversity earlier but how do you pursue diversity while also differentiating yourself from all the other festivals pursuing the same goal? Because with everyone seeking diversity, festivals can start looking the same.
(GF): The problem with words is when the words come before films. I use these words after selecting the films, not before. I talk about diversity when I have films that talk about diversity and so I’m able to talk about the section when the program’s been made up. I don’t want to talk about quotas, because I think that in this sense, when you have goals that you have to achieve, you make cinema suffer, you don’t make the best choices. I think that films should talk first. We shouldn’t start with :I need diversity, I need women, I need this or that, and then build up the program. It should be the opposite. But I am a woman It’s very easy for me to understand, to feel empathy, and to desire to have, for example, women directors in our program, but it’s not an obligation, it’s just natural. I understand that seen from the outside, it can seem very schematic, like, okay, they need LGBT films, all the festivals need LGBT films, this number of women, this number of geographical countries, a war, a political issue… But at the same time, it’s our world and cinema talks about the world and about what’s happening. So, it’s normal for programmers to follow what we have around. We don’t build the diversity, we find it.
(UM): When we are talking about the female gaze, a long time ago I read the Laura Mulvey article about the male gaze. But it’s very problematic because gaze not all men have the same kind of gaze. And even with female directors, I see that sometimes when you are watching their movies, the gaze is very male. So, I’m curious when you are picking up the movies and you are talking about the female gaze and your sensibility, how you are trying to approach this issue?
(GF): You know, we do our best. When we receive films, we don’t know if they are female or male directors. Of course, we get to know them, especially if they are famous. But if not, we really don’t care. We receive links with the title and we watch them. And we do it on purpose to be completely at ease with that. I don’t think that there is a way of making cinema that it’s female or masculine. Now, I was not talking about that. I’m saying that there are themes that, for example, are closer to a woman. For example, we have in our selection a film called Melk, a Dutch film about a woman who loses her child and decides to give her milk, to donate her milk to other women. And I’m just saying that, of course, this is a film that could have been made by a man, but the sensitivity… .
(UM): You could feel that it is a woman’s perspective.
(GF): Yes, the perspective of a woman on things…
(UM): Is very concrete.
(GF): And it’s very different. And of course, it happens that a man can have a perspective that is concrete and different. Of course, it happens and it’s marvelous when it happens. I’m just saying that sometimes you recognize that it’s made by a woman.
(UM): And what’s your relationship with streamers?
(GF): We don’t get them. Netflix and Amazon are not interested in our section. I’m not against them. I’m not against them because it’s like being against progress. And we have streamers and sometimes they produce great films. And I’m happy if a great film is in a festival, whether it’s produced by Netflix or someone else.
(UM): And in terms of attracting a younger audience, is that something you struggle with at Venice?
(GF): Yeah. Venice is very expensive. And Cannes is very expensive. So, I think that this is a huge problem for young festival goers. But apart from that, the lucky ones and the privileged ones were able to rent an apartment. Or there’s also camping here. And honestly, in our screenings, I’ve seen many young people. So, I’m quite optimistic. This morning, we programmed the new short film by Céline Sciamma and the average age was young, so I’m quite optimistic.
(UM): And in terms of cost, with the rising inflation right now, is that affecting your festival?
(GF): We are not a rich festival. For example, we don’t cover travel expenses for our guests. We do our best to balance everything but we are struggling with the economy. It’s always an issue. And after COVID, it was not easy for us, but we are doing our best. We are trying to survive.
(UM): Do you invite films to your festival or is it mostly from submissions?
(GF): Mostly through the submissions. With some exceptions: for example in the case of Céline Sciamma, she didn’t submit a film. Last year she was our president of the jury and I knew about this independent project she was going to make so that’s the reason why she’s here. I followed the project and I asked for the film. The same thing happened with Teona Mitevska, the director of The Happiest Man in the World. She made a film during the pandemic and she’s a very good friend of one of our programmers. He found out she was making a film of her experience during the pandemic so we asked for it and followed it. So it happens that we follow projects of filmmakers we admire or we follow the projects because we met the filmmakers during labs. But I will say that 80% of films that we get are through submissions.
(UM): And do you have a vision for the future of your festival, how you want it to look?
(GF): My dream is very related to my experience when I was a festival goer. I would like a festival where it’d be possible to have exchanges, real exchanges, between filmmakers and audiences; not be so separated. Of course, the star system is great, but at the same time, the humanity that someone can experience at a film festival, for me, is a treasure. And the possibility of getting to know a filmmaker as a film critic or a wannabe filmmaker, I would love to have a festival where these kinds of exchanges could be possible. Where not only filmmakers but also philosophers, writers, and artists could be involved.
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