Italian film critic and festival chief Giorgio Gosetti, who founded the Venice Film Festival’s independently-run Venice Days, known as the Giornate Degli Autori in Italian, and held key roles in several other prominent Italian film entities, has died. He was 70.
The news of his death was announced by Italian news agency ANSA, for whom Gosetti – who was also a film journalist – worked for many years, and by the Venice Biennale.
The cause of Gosetti’s death was not disclosed.
“His passing leaves a huge void in the festival community, in Italian film culture, and in all those who had the opportunity to know and appreciate his professionalism, his wisdom, his kind and human ways,” the Biennale, which is the Venice Film Festival’s parent org., said in a statement on Friday.
Born in Venice in 1956, Gosetti started collaborating with the Venice Film Festival in 1980, during the years when it was being relaunched under the artistic direction of Carlo Lizzani. He continued his collaboration with the fest under the direction of Gian Luigi Rondi becoming curator the event’s “Venezia ieri” sidebar. Gosetti then continued to have close ties with Venice when the fest was headed by Gillo Pontecorvo, becoming Pontecorvo’s right hand man and curating the fest’s “Notti veneziane” section between 1992 and 1996.
In 2004 Gosetti founded the Venice Days section, modelled on Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and supported by Italian film directors’ associations ANAC and 100autori.
Gosetti left Venice in 2006 to work at the Rome Film Festival, of which he and Teresa Cavina were co-directors of its Cinema section that made up most of the competition lineup. They resigned in 2008 after a political shakeup.
Gosetti was also director of the Courmayeur Noir in Festival (which he founded in 1991). He also directed Italy’s MystFest and Antenna Cinema festivals. He was a film professor at Bologna’s DAMS Master’s Degree program and was a member of the board of AFIC (Italian Association of Film Festivals. His many publications include book and essays on Marguerite Duras, Luigi Comencini, Alfred Hitchcock, Carlo di Carlo, Allan Dwann, and Sydney Pollack. He has directed MystFest, Antenna Cinema, and the Rome Film Festival.
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