Thoughts from my experience at the Venice Film Festival 2013

Hello,

 

This is Matt Micucci, your faithful reporter from the Venice Film Festival. I hope you have been following my news, reviews, interviews and overall gossip from the Lido. It’s has been a lot of work, but enjoyable work, which sadly is coming to an end – for now.

 

Before it does, I would like to do a couple of things. One of them is to publicly thank the wonderful people at the Irish Film Institute who made this possible for me. I would particularly like to thank Alicia McGivern and Shauna Lyons, as well as Anna Pas in the last stage of my Venice adventure, with whom I had a direct contact and whom I hope to remain in contact with in the future (please, please, please!) I hope to have repaid their trust with dedicated reports on twitter and from my website. I also hope to have represented them well in this 28 Times Cinema project, a program set up by the European Parliament for young cinephiles – one from each European country – to come together and discuss cinema.

 

The festival is not over yet, although it is in its final stages and the running joke is that people have already or are in the process of making their way to Toronto – and I guess I wish I was too. This gives me a chance to reflect on this experience from a more personal perspective; what it meant to me and what I hope it will mean to me. I will leave my personal take on the festival programming for a later report which I will send soon.

 

When I received the news that I had been picked as the IFI’s representative in the 28 Times Cinema selection for the Venice Film Festival, I was extremely happy. So happy, in fact, that I still fail to find the words to describe my joy. I have been passionate about film all my life. Cinema is just something I have always connected with and something that has always meant an awful lot to me. This passion and love I feel for it led me to study Film and TV in GMIT, a course which I successfully completed in 2010. While I entered with the course with an idea of becoming a filmmaker, I realised that perhaps what I really wanted to do was talk about film and open cinematic debates by pursuing a career in film journalism. Another aspect of the film process which fascinates me is the promotion of film on every level, which is why I feel the need to work hard at it and hope to someday, in the near future, be making a living out of it.

 

In the last while, I have been working real hard in building a reputation for myself. I work in a factory and through that job I am able to finance my journalistic ambitions by attending and faithfully reporting on festivals and general film events. It really is hard work, which a lot of the time goes by unnoticed. For instance, during the Film Fleadh, I was getting up at six in the morning to go to work for eight hours, after which I would quickly get into town and attend every Irish screening until the last one, which usually ended after one o’clock. Then, I would run home and report on every screening I had attended, transcribe the interviews and review every film. This process painstaking process usually only left me about two or three hours a night of sleep a night, but I was happy enough knowing that my work would be published on a platform like Film Ireland.

 

This was a great experience in preparation for Venice, which in comparison was a lot easier. While here, I was able to focus on film and do it in a slightly more relaxed way – although I will say that while here I picked up a reputation as a bit of a workaholic. This perhaps restricted the number of films I could have watched, but I felt it was important to control the quality of my work rather than the quantity. While here, I collaborated with CineEuropa, who set up a blog for us and our reports and reviews, but also linked the IFI to all my shorter reviews for all the screenings I attended. I also kept a daily Venice diary which I compiled for Film Ireland. All the while, I looked and am still constantly looking for interviews here at the lido. My three interviews were with the director of the festival Alberto Barbera and the filmmakers Bruce la Bruce and Costanza Quatriglio.

 

So far, I have had a chance to meet many interesting people, whether it was people from the industry, people from the 28 Times Cinema group or simply avid cinemagoers. In this sense, it was a great chance to network and ask people questions and advice. So far, I have asked a lot of people what in the world I can do to really make it into this industry – how to become a professional. How do I infiltrate the festival circuit, how can I make a living out of it, how can I dedicate my life to the promotion of films, filmmakers and festivals? And, most importantly, is there any point in working at it for free? If so, how long does it take until your professional ambitions start feeling like a hobby which you are extremely dedicated and passionate about but doesn’t feel much more important than having a stamp collection which you proudly show to people every now and again?

 

This is a doubt that many people have, no matter what their field of professionalism is. It could be science, it could be art, it could be sports… All our lives, we are taught that no one is ever going to hand you anything on a silver platter. We have to work hard to get what we want and laugh in the face of rejection. So, I asked myself what I should do to get my work out there and make it matter, especially in an internet age where everyone has a say on anything and can share it instantly.

 

Well, without dragging on, here is the main thing I learnt from my experience. You cannot make a living out of film journalism. You certainly can’t make a living out of film criticism, not that it ever particularly interested me to narrow down my field of exposing and promoting film. Yet, a good film critique, is not easy to write. You need to take into consideration many things. One is the structure of the piece. It can’t be taken for granted. No one likes to read a review which feels like a list. On the other hand, it’s equally as hard to read a film that is just a series of abstract thoughts impossible to follow – it would be a paradox to have to draw up an analysis of a piece of film critiquing. Another one is that you have to know about films. You can’t just talk about the story, films are more than a story. You have to talk about everything – everything! Even in short reviews, you have to structure a sentence in a way that leaves the reader completely satisfied with the information. The third thing is that it has to be geared towards promoting the film. Even if the review is bad, it has to promote the film, because we are all in the same industry and we want money to keep rolling into cinemas. Furthermore, I believe most critics tend to be too negative…generally speaking, films are never as bad as people think. Taste can’t overtake the tone of the review – the moment it does, the review is null.

 

So, given that there is a lot of skill involved in film reviewing and given the fact that a good review can influence the intake of a film at the box office, I wonder why at the end of the day it is treated so thanklessly. In my Venice experience, reviewing wasn’t just something I did, it was something I loved doing but also a sense of duty. That is why I made sure that I wrote something on every screening I attended. But did you know that a lot of journalists make their reviews up? I saw it with my own eyes. People who write for respectable newspapers go to the press room, have a talk with other journalists about a certain film they could not attend and then write a review on it. Not everyone does it, but it is done! Are the people who practice such shifty techniques the people responsible for tainting this professions’ credibility?

 

On a more positive note, I believe to have somewhat mastered the art of reporting. I always carried my audio recorder with me at every screenings, just in case it would be the one which would be attended by the filmmaker. When the filmmaker would say a few words about the movie, then that gave me a chance to write about the film in more detail, including the filmmaker’s thoughts and stories regarding his own creation. To complete my self-training on the ‘report’, I practiced the art of sneaking into press conferences without a press badge, or standing next to the door and overhearing what was said. The main one of these was the one for Philomena the film by Stephen Frears which at the time of writing looks set to win the competition. At the time, I hadn’t seen the film, so I just posted what was said at the conference directly transcribed.

 

These reports are very important. In my opinion, they are the best way that a film can be promoted through the press. However, something I learnt is that the majority of film journalists love the sound of their own voice and ask extremely lengthy questions, often bad ones too. Half of the time, they are not even questions – they are just pretentious thoughts on the film which just leave the filmmaker feeling awkward about what he or she has to say. These are people who work for newspapers, hence they get paid for what they do. How? What is the process of selection? If there is a process of selection, it certainly has nothing to do with meritocracy…

 

Another priceless experience I received here in Venice was in interviewing, which I think is the ultimate promotion that the press and media in general can offer to a filmmaker and his creation. It’s not easy to approach a filmmaker. A lot of the time, they want to talk to you, they want you to promote their work and promote themselves. However, you are also aware of the fact that you will be talking to a stranger, perhaps someone you artistically admire and have admired for a long time, for at least ten minutes. You don’t know them, you don’t know how they will react to your questions. I also learnt about the little inconveniences which may take place during the interview, like your audio recorder may suddenly stop or you may have to fight a sudden incontrollable urge to yawn!

 

The thing which I feel I’m good at – though of course, there is always room to grow – is making the filmmaker feel comfortable. I refuse to have a list of questions in front of me, because I want my interviews to be chats. Usually, the person you talk to is quite interesting. Let’s face it, most filmmakers are even a little nuts. And if film journalists like the sound of their own voice, most filmmakers are crazy about it.

 

But certainly the most important thing I learned about this job is that you can never forget that you are a dedicated film fan first. Film is a wonderful form of art, perhaps the most impressive, but it is so mistreated that sometimes it is hard to watch. If journalists start acting superior to cinema, then we can all kiss its credibility goodbye. And so many journalists feel superior to the concept of cinema. They look nostalgically at the past and sigh. They announce to the world that every film they have seen is terrible, but can no longer tell you why. They are the ones that have lost that passion and drive that helped them make a name for themselves, although most of the time these are the people that got into film journalist by accident or accessibility at a time where film magazines were important and their longevity not always to threatened by the ‘anti-democracy’ of the internet, of which cinema debates are dominated by superhero films!

 

The most meaningful thing that I learnt, on a personal level, is that I want this. I want to be involved, and I will work very hard to build a reputation as a good and hard working promoter of film. Yes, I have lost my belief in film journalism, perhaps even journalism intended in the Cary Grant in His Girl Friday fashion. But I will never lose my belief in cinema. That is why I would gladly love for the term ‘film journalism’ to die. It’s probably always been hypocritical anyways. A constructive film journalist is really a promoter of film, whether the film is bad or not. That is why I believe it would be great for journalists and cinema, meant as an establishment, to work closer together to maintain its longevity.

 

So, that’s what I have learnt so far in my experience in Venice. At the risk of seeming incredibly pretentious, I would really like to open a debate particularly regarding Irish cinema from what I learnt here in Venice. It is crucial not to underestimate the value of film reporting, film interviewing and film critique. Ireland needs a good film magazine. Ireland needs more critique circles. Ireland needs more talks before special screenings. This type of film promotion is exactly what can moderate film culture, promote film passion and certainly, when done right, generate more money in the industry.

 

P.S. – Thank you for reading. I promise my next one will be about the films I have seen in Venice, and perhaps it will be much more entertaining!