Alberto Barbera admits that he has made lots of errors.
When Barbera, who hails from the Piedmontese textile city of Biella, took over for the first time as creative director of The Venice Film Festival in 1999, the scenario was dire: The Festival, which is managed by the government-supported Biennale Basis, was a large number. He remembers that the services on the Lido have been awful, attendance by prime Hollywood stars and producers was underwhelming and as a enterprise, Venice was a loss-making proposition. In the scorching warmth of late August and early September in Venice, there wasn’t even any air-con at the Palazzo del Cinema.
Barbera has helped to flip all that round. He was twice named as creative director by Paolo Baratta, the legendary president of the Biennale Basis, who would over the years channel hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of new investments to the pageant, utterly refurbishing the Palazzo del Cinema and including extension annexes.
“I chose Alberto in 1999 because I wanted an artistic director who would be absolutely independent, and not subject to any political influence,” Barratta recalled in an interview.
But in 2001, when Silvio Berlusconi was elected prime minister, his tradition minister, Giuliano Urbani, determined to get rid of Barbera. He actually pushed him out of the job, a 12 months earlier than the finish of his four-year mandate. So Barbera took a protracted hiatus from the pageant, and returned to his native Piedmont to curate smaller movie festivals and museums. He was not reappointed to Venice till greater than a decade later. This time, nevertheless, when Barbera returned as pageant director in 2012, Baratta was ready, and collectively they labored to implement their relaunch plans.
Over the previous dozen years, Barbera has confirmed to be extra than simply an astute movie picker; his artistic administration of the pageant would possibly qualify as a case research of how to flip round and develop a pageant enterprise. To make certain, his work was made simpler thanks to the robust backing of two previous presidents of each Baratta and one other former president, Roberto Cicutto. Each males helped to information the bold revival of the pageant. Barbera labored with the Biennale Basis to additional modernize the infrastructure, he relentlessly promoted a extra energetic enterprise market, and he has offered a gentle circulation of high-quality movies over the years.
Today Barbera likes to brag about how Venice has overtaken Cannes in phrases of the quantity of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning movies they’ve previewed. He isn’t improper. In the final three years, between 2022 and 2024, movies screened at Cannes obtained 56 Oscar nominations, whereas Venice had 77 nominations. Cannes-originated movies received 5 Oscars, whereas movies that had premiered at Venice received 14.
However does Venice make cash? Does the Festival flip a revenue, or does it simply hold its head above water? Spoiler: it breaks even on 23 million euros ($25.5 million) of annual revenues, however solely thanks to authorities grants and the help of the Biennale Basis, so it’s closely backed.
It’s price remembering that there are lots of festivals that don’t make cash. Authorities grants are key in Cannes and Berlin in addition to in Venice. Most festivals function on a non-profit mannequin and depend on sponsorships, donations and private and non-private sector grants as their major type of earnings. Ticket gross sales normally quantity to merely a small proportion of a pageant’s revenues. That is additionally true in Venice, the place ticket gross sales introduced in solely round 2 million euros ($2.2 million) in 2023, or ten p.c of the complete funds of 23 million euros. The remaining of the 23 million got here from a Ministry of Tradition grant of 13.7 million euros ($15 million), sponsorships price round 5 million euros ($5.5 million), and about 2 million euros in funding from the pageant’s mothership, the Biennale Basis.
In the complicated world of Italian state-controlled entities, the place many org charts seem like spider webs, the Biennale Basis is a comparatively easy creature. It’s a personal basis whose four-person board is nominated by the Ministry of Tradition (2), the Area of the Veneto (1) and the Metropolis of Venice (1). It employs greater than 200 individuals, 118 of them full-time staff.
The federal government ministry final 12 months gave a complete of 16 million euros ($17.8 million) of grants to the Biennale Basis, or one fourth of its complete revenues of 66 million euros ($73 million). The tradition ministry additionally has the function of selecting a President of the Biennale, who can also be a board member. What is very attention-grabbing, in Italy, is that though the president is usually chosen as a result of of his or her political affinities, the working models that the Basis controls even have full artistic and operational autonomy. The Artwork Biennale, which has a funds related to that of the movie pageant, is the one which makes the most cash. The profitability of Artwork in 2022 got here from the sale of 800,000 tickets, and it’s believed to have made as a lot as 10 million euros ($11.1 million) in working revenue. Half of this revenue, says native Venice journalist and veteran Biennale-watcher Enrico Tantucci, may have been used to subsidize the smaller sectors of the Biennale Basis, akin to dance, theater and music.
Taken collectively, the complete Biennale Basis made a web revenue of 2.5 million euros ($2.7 million) in 2023 on 66 million euros ($73.4 million) of revenues, and declared a money reserve of 26 million euros ($28.9 million), which isn’t dangerous for a public-private entity in Italy, or wherever.
In fact, the Biennale depends closely on public funding, with beneficiant money grants from the tradition ministry and the free use of helpful actual property from the Metropolis of Venice.
Italy’s Minister of Tradition, Gennaro Sangiuliano, instructed The Hollywood Reporter that his ministry contributes yearly to Venice, and can proceed to accomplish that, however that he’s particularly proud of having piloted by some 170 million euros ($187 million) of latest modernization grants for the Biennale Basis from European Subsequent Era funds.
“Cinema represents the most modern form of art, and we consider Venice to be of the highest importance,” Sangiuliano, a former Rai government, instructed me. He stated the Venice Film Festival “is an unparalleled international showcase that combines the beauty of Venice with the seventh art.” The minister even despatched me a Whatsapp after the interview with a photograph of himself and the Biennale Basis’s president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, inspecting new infrastructure tasks at the Arsenale.
So whereas the tradition ministry is investing tons of cash, and the area contributes very modestly, the metropolis of Venice doesn’t give a dime. As an alternative, it provides a price that’s price hundreds of thousands of euros a 12 months, thanks to a decades-old settlement whereby the Metropolis of Venice lets the Biennale and the Festival stay rent-free in some of the world’s most costly canal-side actual property. The Biennale’s Gothic fifteenth century palace on the Grand Canal close to Saint Mark’s Sq. is definitely owned by the metropolis however it’s leased rent-free to the Biennale. The identical goes for the Palazzo del Cinema and the Palazzo del On line casino, website of the movie pageant on the Lido, and the sprawling acreage of the Arsenale space, which quantities to almost a fifth of the dimension of Venice.
The Palazzo del Biennale in Ca’ Giustinian alone is price north of $75 million and the legendary palazzi on the Lido are in all probability price the similar once more in accordance to native journalist Tantucci, who added that it could value at the least ten million euros a 12 months or extra to hire all of that property.
After I went to see Alberto Barbera final week, it was 90 levels in the shade on the Lido, the form of oppressive summer season day that can slay you, whether or not you are taking the vaporetto throughout the lagoon or a taxi boat. The large corridors of the imposing Mussolini-era Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido have been empty and silent once I arrived. The Palazzo first opened in 1937, 5 years after Il Duce had personally based the pageant so as to promote Italian cinema. For the first 4 years, the pageant was held at the subsequent door Lodge Excelsior, which is now the epicenter of deal-making and of being seen.
I discovered Barbera on the second flooring, holed up in an workplace with a postcard view of the pink carpet and the seaside beneath. He was dressed casually in a darkish gray Fila cotton polo and khaki trousers, plus his trademark blue Converse sneakers. He regarded cool and refreshed (thanks to the air-con) and he appeared to be in pre-Festival mode. He regarded like a person prepared to welcome a number of celebs, just some, like Woman Gaga, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Joaquin Phoenix, Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, Daniel Craig, Adrien Brody, George Clooney and Monica Bellucci, who all seem in the fest’s 2024 lineup. Barbera can be particularly cautious to ensure that the paths of two of his prime stars don’t cross: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, in the center of bitter divorce, won’t even be in Venice on the similar days throughout the Festival. To prepare for all this, the director and a small skeletal workers have been laboring all through the canine days of summer season.
I begin by asking Barbera what classes he had discovered, and what errors he’s made in additional than fifteen years of working the Festival.
“The first mistake I made was in 1999, the first time I was appointed as director, and that was to cancel the first tentative effort to build a market in Venice. I worried about the lack of space and I wrongly thought that internet would have taken over and supported the relationship between producers and sales agents and buyers and so on, which is the opposite of what happened actually,” remembers Barbera. “Film markets were all growing in all the festivals, and Venice was the only one without a market. So we had to come up with a strategy.”
That technique would have to wait till 2012, when Baratta introduced Barbera again as creative director. By then, he was prepared to implement his plans, and the Biennale Basis was ready to again him.
I requested him to describe the relaunch of Venice. What did he do to persuade Hollywood to spend money on a better presence on the Lido?
“First, I made a roadshow to convince the Americans, the studios, the majors, to come back to Venice because they had stopped coming, they were going to Toronto instead of coming to the Lido. Second, I decided to reduce the number of films, counting on the quality of the films instead of the quantity. Third, I asked the Biennale to make major capital investments to renovate and refurbish all the structures, all the venues, all the facilities that we had, and to build new theaters. And lastly, I worked a lot to convince professionals, the business to come back to Venice instead of just Toronto. We needed to have producers, buyers, sales agents, distributors — everybody involved with the film industry and we succeeded in bringing them back to Venice.”
Requested to describe the Festival in enterprise phrases, Barbera smiles. “I would call it a business that keeps on growing, year after year, in terms of prestige but also in terms of numbers. Every year we have between five and 10 percent higher accreditation numbers, more audience, more professionals attending the festival. And the success of this event is still growing.”
He admits that have been it not for the help of the Biennale Basis he wouldn’t break even, and he shares that “in some years, Art or Architecture are more profitable and their surplus helps the Biennale to contribute to our budget for our fixed costs.” In different phrases, the mothership takes from the wealthy and offers to the needy, with earnings from Artwork Biennale getting used primarily to assist subsidize the smaller theater, music and dance occasions.
Earlier than leaving the Lido, I ask Barbera to discuss the variations between Venice and Cannes. “I think the main difference is in terms of calendar, because Cannes comes at the end of the old season, and Venice is just at the beginning of the new season,” he says. “After all, the new season starts in September, which is also the beginning of the campaign for the Oscar for the American cinema. And in recent years we have had more Oscar nominated and Oscar winning films than Cannes,” he provides, with a mischievous smile.
Julka Villa, the head of advertising and marketing for the 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) a 12 months Campari drinks group, is a giant fan of Barbera. She has watched him over the previous seven years during which Campari has been a major pageant sponsor. She loves to recall that Campari’s ties to cinema return to 1984, when Federico Fellini shot his first-ever TV spot for Campari.
Villa says that Barbera has been a assure of high quality for Venice. “I think he has done a very good job of establishing Venice with its own personality, with a very specific curation. He has made it not just an important film festival, but one that gives a lot of importance to the content, to maintaining high standards,” she notes.
Campari, together with the different major sponsors Cartier, Armani Magnificence and Mastercard, supplies most of the Festival’s 5 million euros ($5.5 million) of annual sponsorship revenues at Venice. Campari’s Villa won’t disclose Campari’s contribution however she says it is a superb funding. “The founding values of Campari include creativity, and film is one of the most important creative arts, so we are on brand” says Villa.
Campari additionally began sponsoring Cannes three years in the past, and is a sponsor at Berlin and Locarno as effectively. “Venice is important to us because it is one of the most prestigious film festivals, and really open to the general public, so it is very democratic,” says Villa. “Venice is also important to Campari because it is really where the Aperol Spritz first became popular.”
Quickly the favourite pink cocktail can be ubiquitous on the terrace bar of the Excelsior, as Hollywood royalty and the fits, along with three thousand thirsty journalists, descend on the Lido.
Alberto Barbera seems like a person who’s glad together with his life. He can fortunately look out from his nook workplace to the pink carpet beneath. Even higher, he doesn’t have to cope with pink ink.
Alan Friedman is the Editor-At-Giant of THR Roma, The Hollywood Reporter’s Italian version.
