Venice, 10th May 2008
The great Italian master Ermanno Olmi will be awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 65th Venice Film Festival. The award, which pays tribute to a film-maker who has left a profound mark on the inventiveness of modern cinema, was proposed by the Festival Director, Marco Müller, and approved by the Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta.
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement will be awarded to the director –previously the recipient of a Silver Lion in 1987 for Long Live the Lady! and a Golden Lion in 1988 for The Legend of the Holy Drinker– in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema during the 65th Venice Film Festival (27th August - 6th September 2008).
Ermanno Olmi, a film-maker of the new frontier (geographically speaking), has chosen to live outside the standard fashions and trends, creating images and stories that help us identify with and understand mankind. His cinema, imbued with infinite wonder, expresses an ethical gaze which is so close to the real world as to appear old-fashioned and "outdated", yet which believes in a possible continuity or lack of interruption between the screen and life itself.
Since the start of his career, Ermanno Olmi has always chosen to operate in the margins of major productions and to abandon traditional production patterns in order to beat a path, during the course of his diverse activities over a period of more than fifty years, that figures among the most original and least canonical in post-war film-making, confirming himself to be a crucial reference point for much of the independent film scene, and becoming, at the same time, an absolute master of precision and freedom. Olmi may be regarded as one of the rare personalities in the history of cinema able to manage all the creative aspects of his own films (apart from directing and screenwriting, he has frequently adopted the guise of director of photography, cameraman and editor of his films) and to explore new frontiers in film language, via an innovative exploitation of the camera, used in a manner that is not an end in itself. Regardless of the diverse stylistic procedures opted for, his method of film-making - a means of amplifying his own and others' humanity - has always been at the service of the faces of the characters (carriers of the signs of the surrounding world), their gestures (which reveal absolute values) and landscapes (a similarly profound expression of the condition of the lives of the people).
Reaping the harvest of the seeds of Neo-realism, especially those sown by Rossellini - and embracing stylistic elements from auteurs such as Bresson, Dreyer, Resnais, Bergman and Mizoguchi - Olmi was able to adapt the principles of the movement, to elaborate his own poetry, to experiment with new forms of construction and deconstruction of the narrative, striding majestically through new, unexplored boundaries between documentary and fiction, and alternating a realistic mood with whimsical and fable-like visions. Using as a starting point events directly experienced by himself (as well as stories and memories from his childhood), Olmi has embodied, as no-one before him, the social and anthropological transformation of Italy from the post-war period onwards, and the country's epoch-making passage from the rhythms and tempos of an agricultural civilisation to that of an industrial economy, with a conscious yet discreet glance at the words and actions of the humble and the destitute. With affectionate and compassionate attention to the difficulties that exist within a society that is often inhumane and that undermines humanity, Olmi has constantly attempted to seek out any possible cracks which may be able to break repetitive and deranged actions, and those glimmers of wonderment and truth which are the very essence of life. History is all the richer for his images and documentations, indelible from the collective mind, and his films breathe new life into values, knowledge and understanding that would otherwise be lost.
In fact, Olmi has declared: "In this day and age when, more than ever, everything is characterised by violence, I relate more to the "anonymous folk", and I intend to continue being just "one" voice in the general discourse. A voice which, in its tone and measure (and fully aware of my own limitations) speaks out not amongst cultivated people who teach and propose solutions, but amongst the anonymous folk who are looking for an answer. Today, cinema is accessible to everyone. But not all are able to be themselves, to simply express their know-how, to articulate what is behind the rationale of the discussion. In this way, does one risk being banal? Banality attracts me. I believe more in the mystery of banality that in the clamour of official discussions. Anything that is authentic can never really be banal."
