Another year, another gender parity discussion about the Venice Film Festival. After yesterday’s lineup reveal showed that there was an increase from one female director in competition to TWO female directors in competition, people were a bit confused. Didn’t festival director Alberto Barbera sign a pledge to have more representation at his festival? Well, according to the Venice boss, he did just that, but people are focused on the wrong numbers.
Speaking to Variety, Barbera broke down why the gender parity confusion stems from people focused on the official competition and not on the entire festival, as a whole.
“This year across all sections, excluding Venice Classics, we’ve got 24% women directors,” said Barbera. “Last year it was 20%. We received 1,860 submissions this year. Of these submissions, women directors accounted for less than 24%…What I’m never going to do is take a movie directed by a woman just to raise the proportion…”
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He continued, “The other significant number this year is that the percentage of shorts we selected directed by women is 50% and submissions of shorts by women accounted for 43%. That means something is changing in the new generations. But in industrial movies, we can’t expect this type of change immediately. It’s going to take time.”
This is a similar answer to what he gave last year when this question came up. He pointed to the fact that having more female representation at Venice is reliant on more women submitting films to be considered. But what’s different this year is the fact that Roman Polanski has a film in competition, which only exacerbates the concerns of those worried about gender parity.
“J’Accuse” is the latest film from Polanski, who has experienced a rough go of it over the last year or so due to the #MeToo movement and the resurfacing of information about his rape conviction from the ‘70s. Barbera said that he didn’t even take those issues into consideration when choosing the filmmaker’s latest for the competition.
“This is a great movie,” he explained. “We’re talking the same level as ‘The Pianist’….And I have no doubt it will be recognized as such. The only thing you can do is distinguish between the man and the artist. Polanski is a great artist, one of the last great European auteurs. I didn’t hesitate for a second in taking it….”
He added, “Polanski’s problems with L.A. County and his conscience are his personal problems, aside from the fact that I think that, after 40 years of tribulations, he’s paid for what he did. But as a festival director, what counts is that he made a great movie.”
This seems to be the debate that film fans have gone through over and over again since #MeToo has cratered the careers of so many industry figures. Can you separate the art from the artist? In the case of Venice, it’s clear that Barbera is trying to make it all about the art, for better or worse.
The 2019 edition of the Venice Film Festival begins on August 28.