Director Lucrecia Martel is President of this year’s Venice Film Festival jury, at the opening press conference this morning, Martel admitted that Roman Polanski and the overall anti-#MeToo movement happening within the festival is somewhat problematic, but she also defended the inclusion of his latest film in competition. (via Deadline).
Polanski is a convicted rapist that, in the late ‘70s, fled to Europe to escape jail time in the States.
“I don’t separate the man from the art. I think that important aspects of the work emerges in the man,” Martel said. “A man who commits a crime of this size who is then condemned, and the victim considers herself satisfied with the compensation is difficult for me judge… It is difficult to define what is the right approach we have to take with people who have committed certain acts and were judged for them. I think these questions are part of the debate in our times.”
However, Martel does defend the movie being part of the competition because conversation is needed if we want to make actual progress:
“I will not congratulate him, but I think it is correct that his movie is here at this festival, we have to develop our dialogue with him and this is the best possible place to go on with this type of discussion,” said the filmmaker.
Venice director Alberto Barbera himself defended the decision to include the likes of Polanski and Nate Parker into this year’s lineup, “The history of art is full of artists who committed crimes of a different nature, nevertheless, we have continued to admire their works of art. The same is true for Polanski who is, in my opinion, one of the last masters still active in European cinema.”
Barbera then went on to blame film schools and that, if you do force quotas on a festival, the quality of the event will suffer. This was followed by Martel’s rebuttal, “What if we were in a situation when we had to have 50/50, are you sure we wouldn’t have the quality?”
“If I found 50% of films directed by women, I would have done so without quotas. I have tried,” responded Barbera.
When it comes to just two female directors being part of the Venice competition this year, Martel believes quotas are necessary to not make this happen again, “Quotas are pertinent for the time being,” Martel said. “Do I like them? No. But I don’t think I know of any other system that would force this industry to think differently and take into consideration films directed by women.”
This doesn’t look like it’s going to end, in fact, it will only be accentuated when Polanski walks the red carpet for the premiere of “An Officer and A Spy” in two days time, which I hear is absolutely brilliant and incredibly indebted with parallels to our current zeitgeist.