Taormina Head Barrett Wissman On Wooing Disney For ‘Indiana Jones’; Next Gen Bella Thorne Event & John Landis’ Italian Superstar Status
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Barrett Wissman is gearing up for his inaugural edition of the Taormina Film Festival as the newly appointed Executive and co-Artistic Director of the Sicily-set event, running from June 23 to July 1.
Unfolding in the hilltop town of Taormina, famed for its Teatro Antico amphitheatre, views on Mount Etna, and more recently, its appearance in The White Lotus, the event is one of Italy’s oldest and most prestigious film festivals.
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Wissman signed up for the role just two-and-a-half months ahead of its 69th edition and is the 15th person to take up the challenge in the last decade, with the festival going through a raft of solo artistic directors and co-artistic director teams.
It’s not quite a baptism of fire for Wissman, however, who has decades of experience in performing arts, social media, festival and events management as the founding chairman of London-based agency IMG Artists.
The Texan arts and entertainment impresario has taken the challenge in his stride to deliver an eclectic line-up bearing testimony to his wide experience and network.
The festival opens with a Pavarotti Forever live opera event on Friday before launching into an eclectic film program topped by the Italian studio blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny, in the presence of Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen.
Further highlights include US indie titles In The Fire and The Absence of Eden, starry Italian comedies The Undecided Groom and The Worst Days, Cannes 2023 opener Jeanne du Barry, a special evening devoted to short films curated by actress and influencer Bella Thorne and retrospectives celebrating the work of John Landis and Abel Ferrara.
Deadline caught up with Wissman earlier this week as he was putting the final touches to the festival.
DEADLINE: Your official title is Taormina Film Festival Executive and co-Artistic Director, working alongside co-Artistic Director Beatrice Venezi who is also head of the umbrella body, the Tao Arte Sicilia Foundation. Can you explain how the structure works?
WISSMAN: The foundation does two things, the film festival and the arts festival afterwards throughout the summer. My job is the film festival while Beatrice Venezi is focused on the arts festival. From the film programming point of view, there was really no input from the foundation, other than to generally agree or disagree on things, while we did collaborate on the Pavarotti event. But the film festival is really me, I’m doing 90% of it.
DEADLINE: It’s quite rare for a non-Italian to be given the reins of an Italian cultural event? Do you feel comfortable in the role?
BARRETT WISSMAN: I’ve lived and done festivals before in Italy. I’m used to working in Italy and I speak Italian. I started the Tuscan Sun Festival in Cortona. It sort of took over from Spoleto and was there for almost 15 years.
We had virtually every major classical jazz artist. We did a lot of things with actors. Jeremy Irons, Anthony Hopkins and Robert Redford came. We did a lot of cross-genre type programming. Sting used to do a lot at the festival.
I ran it for many years. It was my project. I started it from ground zero. It was a wonderful thing in a certain place and time and a good experience.
DEADLINE: What drew you to the role of Artistic Director at Taormina?
WISSMAN: The history of the place. By place, I mean the festival. It’s very deep. In many ways, it was more important than Venice for a long time and less commercial.
It’s had its ups and downs caused by political issues where artistic directors have come in for a short period of time; had their effect, some positive, some less positive, but the festival ended up lacking in direction over the years.
I became fascinated because it’s very rare to find a festival with all the attributes that this place has. It’s in a small town, but not too small, has an incredible event venue, and venues in general, and a history.
I’m at a point in my point in my career where to start something from ground zero is not something that I probably want to do again. This is starting from ground zero programmatically, but not organizationally. I thought it’s an opportunity to do something with impact, even if I only had two and a half months to prepare.
DEADLINE: How was it pulling together a line-up In just two-and-a-half months?
WISSMAN: When you look at the program that was put together in such a short period of time, it’s quite impressive but I’m not patting myself on the back. A lot of that is due to this pre-existing history and the fact the market and film industry particularly in Italy, really wants the festival to be successful.
DEADLINE: Nonetheless, pulling in the Italian premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a coup. How did you reel that one in?
WISSMAN: Disney has had some huge successes in Taormina historically [Disney films to have shown in the festival include Inside Out, Toy Story 3] and they love it. After its setbacks of the last 10 years, they were excited to be able to try to do something here again. The Disney CEO in Italy Daniel Frigo told me they used to launch a lot of projects at Taormina.
On Indiana Jones, some of the movie was shot here and then there’s the Teatro Antico. It’s so impressive. I think it will serve a purpose in the commercial promotion of the film. Then speaking with the Disney team, I think they thought that I would do a good job with it, and then there’s the fact that Italy is an important market. It’s a combination of those factors.
DEADLINE: More generally, the festival used to be an important launchpad for bigger commercial titles due out in the later summer, early autumn. Do you plan to reinstate this?
WISSMAN: I think it’s placement in the summer is interesting. Most the other summer film festivals that are in beautiful places are not really that important from a film festival, artistic point of view. But Taormina, because of the size of the theatre, and its impressive nature, it’s very well positioned. I don’t necessarily want it to be known as a summer blockbuster launchpad. But I think that can be part of it, that extra 20% of the festival that adds to whatever else that we’re doing.
DEADLINE: Who goes to the Taormina Film Festival? What’s the audience demographic?
WISSMAN: It’s changed a lot in the past five to 10 years. Sicily has become the Provence and the Tuscany of today. All these people are buying houses here, from Madonna to Mick Jagger. Then you had The White Lotus.
The place has also become really popular with artists. I was speaking with Julian Schnabel, the painter, his daughter lives around here. The photographer Mario Testino moved here.
It’s become a place to go to and restore houses and all that sort of thing. It’s not one particular nationality. There’s a lot of English. Americans, Germans… people from everywhere.
I was in town last night at half past midnight, and you could hardly walk in the streets, it’s so busy. It’s brimming with activity.
But Taormina is not a destination event where you have 1000s of people coming just for the film festival. That needs to be developed. There’s also lot of local people coming from all over Sicily which is why you can’t just program English-speaking or international films, you need a good balance with Italian films.
DEADLiNE: You devoted an evening Teatro Antico slot to the short film-focused program ‘Influential Shorts’ curated by Bella Thorne. That’s quite an audacious move. What was the thinking behind that?
WISSMAN: I’m known for that kind of programming, for really doing different things, even in the fine arts and performing arts. We need to develop new audiences for the arts in the quickly moving world of digital and social media. It’s hard to get young people to sit and watch something for more than two minutes.
If we can create arts experiences for young people, and attract them, to me this is extremely important, because we’re in dire need of education in the arts and promotion of the arts. And so, if this can help to do that a little bit that’s great.
I like the idea of an old-fashioned event bringing people together and having these young, social media icons curate it.
In the film industry, you have a generation of actors, a bit older than Bella, in their 30s, who shunned social media. Kristen Stewart, for example, doesn’t even have an Instagram account. Bella, on the other hand, is a poster child for somebody who’s both an actress and an influencer, and to me that’s really interesting.
DEADLINE: You’re opening the festival with the Pavarotti Forever benefit event for the Luciano Pavarotti Foundation. Is that going to be a permanent fixture in the festival calendar?
WISSMAN: It’s a one off. I just thought it was an interesting event to do and Placido wanted to do it. We have Vittorio Grigolo coming to sing too.
I wanted to try to mix up the programming a little bit to have a couple of different types of things in it, and the venue is so suited to that.
I’ll probably have some kind of Gala evening every year that gives a nod to something film related but isn’t mainstream film. I thought about programming one of these film-with-orchestra concerts where you have the orchestra playing the score live to the movie.
It’s something that’s really impressive to do and very difficult to do. I didn’t want to program both that and Pavarotti evening this year because I didn’t want to turn it into a music festival.
DEADLINE: In other events, you have retrospective programs and career masterclasses devoted to Abel Ferrara and John Landis. How did they come about?
WISSMAN: Abel is a friend of mine and we had been talking about doing something. He said, ‘Well, you know, nobody ever really talked in-depth about my many year-collaboration with Willem [Dafoe}.’ He wanted to do that so we’re showing those seven films that he’s done with Willem.
On John, I love John’s films, it’s sort of my generation. He’s a very engaging person with a strong personality. Also In Italy, John is kind of a superstar, much more than he is in in America for some reason. Everybody knows the films in America, but not much about him.
I think its’s a good mix between retrospectives, current films and cutting-edge films. I like that kind of mix, at least for the first year, where I can kind of get a handle on what works and what doesn’t.
DEADLINE: You’ve talked about creating a mixed program and it does feel very eclectic and different from the sorts of line-ups created by established film festival programmers? Would you agree?
WISSMAN: I’m an arts person. I’m not a film person. You could argue I’m a music person. I’m an arts programmer, not just a film programmer. I usually end up with eclectic mix, not by design but because that’s the way my mind works.
Another key factor is that I’m also very artist focused. I’ve always developed my career in programming in doing what the artist wants and what they want to explore and giving them a platform.
For example, with Marco Perego [whose debut feature In The Absence of Eden world premieres in the festival] I’ve been talking with him about projects for many years.
I’ve known Bella for many years, since she was a teenager, and done some projects with her. When I told her about this, we sort of strategized on what to do.
It’s the same with Abel and Willem. I’ve also done a lot of things with Anthony Hopkins in the past. He’ll come to me and say, ‘Barrett, I really have an interest in working with this person or doing this or doing that.’
I had lunch yesterday with the Italian actress Valeria Golino. She can’t come this year but she really wants to do some things next year, so we’re talking about what that might be.
DEADLINE: So you expect the role to continue into next year?
WISSMAN: There is a contract that I’ll be there. That is the intent.
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