Iranian cinema poetic and realistic: Giovanni Spagnoletti
TEHRAN –(Iranart)- Italian producer Giovanni Spagnoletti who is a member of the jury at the 36th Fajr International Film Festival has described Iranian cinema as poetic and realistic.
Talking to the Tehran Times on Friday, he said that he knows Iran through the art films he has seen from Iranian filmmakers such as Amir Naderi and Abbas Kiarostami in Italy and at international events during the 1980s.
“After that Iranian cinema was a must for me to see,” he noted.
“The Iranian cinema is near Italian neorealism, I think it has the same spirit, which seeks to know the reality of the people of the country and their ideas. It focuses on the poetry and the spirituality of the people, and I think this is very important,” he explained.
Spagnoletti also said that what he likes to see in Iranian cinema is landscapes, people and melodrama.
He said that Iran’s new wave of cinema and its most important films came after the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Similarly, the neorealist films in Italy began with World War II.
The cinema in both periods shows war, misery and the difficulties of life, he added. However, the Italian cinema has produced more comedy films.
“I don’t think it’s easy to make a comedy for people in the world,” Spagnoletti noted.
He said that he also knows the world-renowned Iranian director, Asghar Farhadi.
“For me, it is very important that the 71st Cannes Film Festival opens with Fahradi’s ‘Everybody Knows’. It is a Spanish production with Spanish actors. I think it was the same with his French film, ‘The Past’, where the spirit of Farhadi was concealed, and I think I will see the same Iranian spirit behind this Spanish movie,” he stated.
Spagnoletti has also written and edited almost one hundred publications. He has collaborated with various Italian and foreign magazines and newspapers.
He received the Filippo Sacchi Prize twice, in 1993 and 1996, for his work as a university lecturer. In 2012, he was also honored with the President of the Senate’s Medal and the Mario Gallo Prize. In 2013, he won the Domenico Meccoli Prize.
The Fajr International Film Festival will run at Tehran’s Charsu Cineplex until April 27.