INTERFILM in Venice for the first time

By Philip Lee, Deputy Director of Programmes, WACC

INTERFILM will be officially present at the Mostra del Cinema, the International Film Festival in Venice, in 2008. During the festival INTERFILM, together with its Italian partner organisation, Associazione protestante Cinema ‘Roberta Sbaffi’, will organize two panel discussions. Both are intended to promote cinema as platform for intercultural and interreligious dialogue by exploring the complex relations between film art, cultures and societies.

The first event will be held on 2 September 2008, in the Lutheran Church at Campo SS. Apostoli, and will be dedicated to Ingmar Bergman. After a screening of Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries, INTERFILM president Hans Hodel, Peter Ciaccio, president of the ‘Roberto Sbaffi’ film organisation, and Charles Martig, film commissioner of the Catholic Media Service in Switzerland, will discuss the unique contribution of Bergman as an ‘Inspired Interpreter of Modern Uncertainty’.

On September 3 a second event will be organised at the Lido Festival Centre. An international panel will discuss the last wave of Chinese films: ‘To Live or to Survive? Stimuli and Challenges of Contemporary Chinese Cinema’. Among other speakers at this special event will be Dario Viganò, president of the Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo, the Catholic cinema organisation in Italy, and Karsten Visarius, Executive Director of INTERFILM. Gianna Urizio, former President of WACC-Europe, TV producer and journalist of the RAI, will chair both panels.

Founded in 1955 by representatives of Protestant film organisations INTERFILM supports the Ecumenical Juries at numerous international film festivals, in cooperation with WACC and SIGNIS, the Catholic World Association for Communication. In addition, INTERFILM regularly organizes international conferences on questions concerning the correlation of religion and film. For more information see: www.inter-film.org