Interview: China, Europe should work together to create common language: film festival director

While Chinese film market is growing and changing very fast, China and Europe should work together to create a common language and create the conditions to encourage young talents to present their stories, said Giorgio Gosetti, the Director of Venice Days, an independent event on the sideline of the Venice Film Festival.

Born in Venice in 1956, Giorgio Gosetti is a film festival programmer and director. He served as vice-director of the Venice Film Festival from 1992 to 1996 and has founded or directed different film festivals in Italy, including the Rome Film Festival.

During an interview with Xinhua, Gosetti explained his understanding and expectation towards the internalization of Chinese films.

European audience are fully open to see more Chinese films and more Chinese filmmakers should go abroad to carry out cooperation on the international level, he said.

"The generation of masters like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, opened the Europeans' mind toward a different culture and through this passage, the international and European film festivals received and are receiving more works from china. This is a tradition and a good start," said Gosetti.

"But now we have both in China and Europe a new generation of young audience and filmmakers, they have different taste and expectation for cinema," he explained, stressing that discovering the new tendencies of film markets from both sides is crucial to the internationalization of Chinese films.

"The integrating point is, in my opinion, the development of the diversity of contents and of talents. China and Europe should work together to match the tendencies and even to create a new group of audience," he added.

Noting the future exchanges between Chinese and European new talents, Gosetti said the key lies in creating platforms of communication where they can discuss, invent, and share stories. "I do hope Chinese directors come to Italy and invent story with its own sensibility."

According to the director, Venice Days presents since 2014 the China Film Forum, which is the first China-themed forum in the film festival and attracts many young film professionals to discuss their ideas about Chinese cinema with European masters.

"Young filmmakers in China today are more professional than the last generation. I think Europe can offer certain partnerships in terms of professionalism and technique, which could be useful to the Chinese new generation," he said. Endit