Also this year I had the great fortune to be present at the Lido of Venice for the very famous Venice Film Festival. Between one screening and the next, I realized how true the famous phrase was that cinema is simply life but without dead times: in Venice dead times do not exist, they are completely cut off from waiting before entering the room, from the cry of the paparazzi between excelsior (the famous hotel on the long beach that has been hosting the stars during the festival period since the 1920s) e red carpetfrom press conferences and production house parties.
This abstract montage of the days makes us feel constantly in a film and, as in a film, even in Venice the most abstruse and unthinkable things can happen; at the third screening in a row, after seeing the sunlight for only thirty minutes from the start of the day, viewers and critics begin to feel part of a big family and to let go of social conventions.
One of the first days at 8.30 am in the Great Hall, just before it started Bard (the film in competition by the Mexican director Alejandro Innaritu), it happened that my neighbor arrived out of breath and without batting an eyelid took a yogurt and a banana out of his backpack and prepared there, in the twelfth row, his breakfast. But the oddities don’t stop there!
The first day, when during the screening of “White Noise” which started at 9 in the morning, a very frightened bat he began to flutter in front of the screen, probably disturbed by the confusion he hadn’t heard in a year.
Festival life
In all this chaos, in the light of the sun or in the room, the strangest and most interesting encounters take place: I have known aspiring directors looking for funding for their first film, young fans in tears looking forward to Timothee Chalamet or Harry Stylesspiritual gurus of artists and old journalists ready to tell young people about their adventures.
By attending the lido during the festival period, over the years I have learned that the exhibition can be lived on very different levels: my goal has always been to watch as many films as possible, getting to touch the seven daily screenings only to arrive tired in the evening without having understood much; this year, on the other hand, I had the opportunity (also thanks to the crazy seat reservation system in the dining room) to breathe a little more and observe my other travel companions better.
Among the most interesting and peculiar there are certainly the guys from the Red Carpet: people of all ages who lurk for hours and hours, sometimes even sleeping next to the red carpet so as not to lose the best position, to wait for the fashion show of their favorite stars and get a selfie or an autograph. I must say that when I arrived I was very skeptical about this way of experiencing the festival, I changed my mind when I saw the American actor get out of the car and get bombed by hundreds of flashes. Adam Driver: her presence and her charm were creepy, like that of the splendid Cate Blanchett or Julianne Moore.
The adrenaline thrill of feeling close to similar personalitiesalways seen only through a screen, took me too, so much so that for the following days, passing in front of the entrance to the Excelsior I almost always hoped to come across, or even just to see from a distance, some of my myths such as Willem Defoe or Francesco Small.
In short, the motions that Venice gives me every year always push me to come back for the next edition. The satisfaction of being the first to see great masterpieces and for a moment cross my path with that of great personalities is unparalleled and makes the experience always unique and beautiful.