A documentary alliance

At this year's edition of the Giornate degli Autori a special guest was on hand: the GZDOC Festival, or Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival, which is held annually in Guangzhou in the province of Guangdong.

At the evening presentation of the Chinese festival, the Giornate and GZDOC exchanged a memorandum of intent regarding the launch a cultural partnership between the two events that will be devoted to the documentary genre. The spirit of dialogue manifested in Venice has the aim of giving greater visibility to the ‘cinema of the real', with a special focus on China, where there is a booming market for these films. In the future the two showcases could swap films of interest to them both and plan possible special events to be held over the course of the year.

"The China Forum organized this year in Venice by ANICA in an agreement with MiBACT and the Venice Biennale, in which the Giornate took part in the spirit of fellowship," declared the Director of the Giornate degli Autori, Giorgio Gosetti, "reaffirmed the common goal of the two film industries to forge a strong bond between the two cultures through film narrative. And the market itself suggests the crucial importance that the documentary genre may well have in this phase of ‘getting to know one another'. It therefore seems right for the Giornate to leave a window of dialogue and exploration open, jointly with Doc/it, with whom we have an ongoing content partnership."