TURIN. Back to the Future. Steve Della Casa begins his second term as director of the Turin Film Festival by reconnecting the threads with his past. The western, which he had already explored in the editions of the early 2000s (with retrospectives dedicated to Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann and John Ford), is back, while the critics Francesco Ballo and Marco Giusti (sworn in 2000) are back together with representatives of Italian popular cinema of the seventies (the actor Luc Merenda, the director Antonio Bido), the former director Alberto Barbera, now number one at the Venice Film Festival, also returns to visit. The guest of honor is the English actor Malcolm McDowell, of whom a short selection of films will be shown, including the restored version of Kubrick’s masterpiece «A Clockwork Orange» (which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year).
During a curiously Roman press conference (with Turin journalists doing “come and go” during the day), Della Casa illustrated his idea of Tff rather than a program that is not yet there: “A festival intended as a party , in which anyone who participates – be it the cinephile or the occasional – will find something that can amuse him ». Steve knows perfectly the rituals and the magic of cinematographic manifestations, those little details that give the audience a sense of community. From 25 November to 3 December, the physical ticket office and the possibility of last minute admissions will be reintroduced (cried out last year), subscriptions at special prices, even the neck pass “which allowed you to recognize each other while walking around via Po ».
A few hints on the inauguration ceremony: it will be at the Teatro Regio, «surprising» and broadcast live, it is not known whether on television or streaming. In the daily life of the festival, the Massimo and Greenwich cinemas are confirmed for projections, alongside the Romano and the Centrale. Events also at the Gallerie d’Italia in Piazza San Carlo, while the Industry will again be hosted by the Circolo dei Lettere and Museo del Risorgimento. Casa Festival, a new meeting point for the public, will be located in that same quadrilateral in the heart of the city.
A forty-year edition that the artistic director jokingly defines as “Juventus free” (“but as a consultant I called the art critic Luca Beatrice, representing the minority”). Above all, as the president of the Cinema Museum Enzo Ghigo recalls, it will be a cultural jubilee year for the city, which will open in May with Eurovision and the Book Fair, will continue with Lovers, CinemAmbiente and the Atp Finals, and then close with the Tff. To give life to a program worthy of it, Ghigo and the director Domenico De Gaetano have allocated a budget of one million and eight hundred thousand euros.
However, the more “political” declarations of the new director, who for the first time returned to talk about a “cinema system” in the city, were particularly interesting (and surprising). The expression dates back to the post-Olympic golden years of the Turin audiovisual and for a long time no one had recovered it. Pronounced by others it might sound empty or rhetorical, not by Della Casa who was the protagonist of that era. «Cinema Museum, Festival and Film Commission will be experienced as entities working and rowing in the same direction. We know how many controversies there are in Italy regarding culture, but I am very proud to say that in Turin we will try to use our resources in the best possible way and in complete harmony ». More than a declaration of intent, a real promise to the city. Functional in this the new Casa del Cinema in Turin, which will open in a few months in via Verdi, in the premises of the renewed Cavallerizza Reale. Like the Mole Antonelliana, another “great unfinished” Turin to which the cinema will give a noble and (hopefully) definitive use. –
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