Piera Detassis is the most influential woman in the world of Italian cinema. After a long career covering all aspects of the film industry, from cinema historian to film critic and journalist, as well as organizer of some of the most significant cinema events in Italy, in 2018 she landed the coveted job of president and artistic director of the Academy of Italian Cinema and its David di Donatello awards, Italy’s equivalent to the American Academy Awards.
Detassis talks to The Film Verdict about her job at the Italian academy, her efforts with the industry’s backing to relaunch Italian cinema, and those with Netflix’s VP of Italian Originals Eleonora Andreatta – a long-time friend – to bring about what she describes as “much-needed” gender equality to the world of Italian cinema.
TFV: As President of the Academy of Italian Cinema and its award show, David di Donatello, and considering that it was established in 1955 and Gian Luigi Rondi was at the helm for almost three decades, what challenges did you encounter when you took office?
PD: I worked with Gian Luigi Rondi for a long time. He was an extraordinary president. He would wake up in the morning, and call and say, “I want nine Nobel-prize winners on the panel of judges.” I’d reply, “Yes, of course.” Then I’d go in a corner and cry my heart out. He taught me one important thing: To throw my heart beyond the obstacles. In other words, not be intimidated by obstacles. What this translates to in the case of David di Donatello is the challenge to modernize its structure and bring it up to date in today’s digital world. It also means that we need to reinforce our connection to the world of cinema. In the past, there was a structure that worked all year to arrive to that one evening show. The mission I was given, however, was to work on the training and formation aspects all year – training new viewers and becoming an engine for the Italian cinema. The hard part was the renewal of the panel of judges. As often happens, there were judges who had lost all connection to the world of cinema and needed to be replaced. This is something that I think needs to be done every year. I removed all those who were not connected to the world of cinema. It was tough to do because you end up upsetting a lot of people. But I had the backing of the industry and the Ministry of Culture. That’s what they wanted and that’s the mission I was assigned with.
The other challenge was changing the rules of the vote. It involved reassessing the number of voters and bringing back credibility to the vote. With the help of two of my collaborators who represent the younger generation, I listened to all cinema categories during the year and examined their requests for modifications to the vote. This was a big challenge: to get the concept across that no one, not even the president of David di Donatello, should know the results of the vote until two hours before the start of the show. Or that the judges must be free of interference and not be subjected to conditioning. The merit for all this goes to the industry, which strongly supported these goals and wanted the award to be powerful and authoritative.
TFV: What new initiatives did you set out to achieve when you took office as president of the Academy in 2018, and how have the Academy and David di Donatello become more inclusive since you took office?
PD: It was my goal from the very beginning to take the awards show to Cinecittà, which is the iconic place of Italian cinema. So last year the show was held there. As to inclusion, one of the reforms consisted of bringing more women onto the panel of judges. We also started an important mentoring project called Becoming Maestre – note the [feminine plural] ‘maestre’ instead of the [masculine plural] ‘maestri’ – which is aimed at bringing more women into the market for jobs behind the camera – directors, sound and cutting room technicians, special effects specialists – where there are even fewer women than in other parts of the industry. The teachers we use are all top, well-known professionals in their fields. We select six young women who go directly to work on film sets. This is a big project, also cost-wise, and is done in collaboration with Netflix’s Eleonora Andreatta. Netflix, in fact, has an international gender equality project and here in Italy, they’ve chosen to work with us.
TFV: Since the Academy of Italian Cinema is often referred to as the Italian Oscars, does it follow the same criteria as the American Academy Awards? What’s the main difference in the selection process?
PD: Any film that meets the requirements of the award – namely that the film must be premiered in the movie theaters in a set number of Italian cities for at least seven days – can register to participate in the awards. There is no selection process. In the first round of voting, some panel members vote for all categories and others vote only for the professional categories. In the last round, all judges take a vote for the finalists. What I did change is that in the past documentaries were voted by all judges, as with the feature films, but now there is a commission that picks 10 films for the panel of judges’ vote.
The cinema panel has over 1,600 judges, a good part of which consists of nominees and winners from the previous editions of the awards. The rest are industry representatives, critics, and journalists.
TFV: Can you make a comparison between the César Award, the national film award of France, and David di Donatello?
PD: The César Award is probably the one that’s been most similar to ours. But I don’t know what point they’re at now since they’ve gone through many changes and upheavals in the past three or four years. They have one category that I haven’t yet managed to include in David di Donatello awards and that is the promising actors and actresses.
Our rules are pretty much the same, except that they have a rule that the candidates for the panel of judges must be introduced by two panel members, while for us, it’s the board that approves new judges. But I took one thing from them as soon as I started this job and that is the César du Public – the public’s choice award. Awards sometimes tend to gloss over popular films, so we introduced this new public’s choice award – the David dello Spettatore, or the viewers’ David – that is given to the film that had the highest number of viewers in movie theaters. This is our nod to films whose importance lies in the fact that they bring in money and viewers to the industry.
–Caren Davidkhanian
