Interview: Italy's director Tornatore interested in collaboration with Chinese cinema

Giuseppe Tornatore, one of Italy's most influential directors, expressed strong interest in Chinese films at the second edition of China Film Forum that took place Sunday on the sidelines of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.

Tornatore, Oscar winner for best foreign language film in 1990 for his film Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (New Paradise Cinema), told Xinhua in an interview that he is interested in collaborating with China's cinema. "Though nothing concrete has been decided yet, there are ongoing talks," he said.

He said the forum, supported by Venice Days and Xinhua, an event at the film festival aiming to draw attention to high quality cinema, looked "extremely interesting" to him.

"Italy and China are trying to deepen their collaboration in the cinema field, and therefore I wanted to participate in this forum," he said. "I myself made a little work some years ago in Beijing and it was a wonderful experience," he added.

Tornatore wished collaboration between the two countries will be further enhanced, because "the Italian cinema has an important history, but the Chinese one is extraordinary and is going through a period of great force and energy, thus it would be beautiful to find new collaboration space."

He noted there are not many other countries in the world in which new cinema theaters are continuously opening. "Usually what happens is the contrary, therefore for cinema lovers like me China today looks like a wonderland, with countless audiences and thousands of cinema theaters and a really important market strength," he pointed out.

"Therefore we have many things to learn from China and likely also many things to teach to China, in fact I believe the Italian and Chinese have several points of mutual attraction," Tornatore went on saying.

The director told Xinhua he was particularly hit by the "spectacular nature" and capacity of Chinese cinema to give films the "expressiveness" they need.

"Chinese directors manage to be spectacular when they tell spectacular stories and manage to be minimalist when they tell minimalist stories. That is to say that they manage to do films in the way films need to be, differently from less rich cinema industries where you feel that films are somehow forced to be a little different from their nature," he underlined.

He also noted that Chinese films are very much linked to their home country's culture. "Even when they are fantasy films, you can feel there are always the roots of Chinese history and culture below them, which is a very important characteristic of Chinese cinema that makes it very recognizable, very personal," he explained.

In fact, in his view, it is natural that every cinema expresses the culture of its own country but "of course there are also universal themes that manage to go beyond borders of a certain market or a certain country, which is the beauty of cinema."

"For example, how many Italian films have been around the world, in the same way as Chinese, American and French films? This is the great beauty of cinema," he pointed out.

For this reason, Tornatore was convinced that there will be increasing collaboration occasions on stories that can be interesting for the Italian and Chinese market, but also for other international markets. "There are all the conditions to make it," he highlighted.

Established in 2014, the China Film Forum aims to help insiders of the European film industry better understand the Chinese market, and brought together directors, producers, investors, film critics and journalists for discussions under the theme "Reasons of Creativity."

A major topic at this year's forum was "how to create stories for other cultures." To explore on it, participants watched the trailer of Forgotten War, an upcoming war-themed film brought to the forum by young Chinese producer Han Yi and director Zhang Duanyang, with the goal to demonstrate a historical period of China in a way that Western audience can connect with. Enditem