Jane Campion has touched down at every A-list festival on the planet across her career, from Cannes, where she became the first woman to win its coveted Palme d’Or for The Piano in 1993, to Venice, Toronto and the Berlinale.
However, the New Zealand director held up a torch on Wednesday for the myriad smaller film festivals running around the world year-round as she took up her post as jury president at the 62th Taormina Film Festival.
“I think I love these festivals because they really help you go deep into the films and think about them in a different way, and also to be part of the community of film lovers. People are realizing community is so important,” Campion told the opening press conference.
“We in Australia and New Zealand are finding that more people are wanting to go to these festivals, increasingly… because you can me with other people without your telephones for a little bit.”
Campion is reunited in the jury with Holly Hunter, star of The Piano who won Best Actress in Cannes as well as an Oscar for her performance in the historical romance as an elective mute woman from Scotland who is sent to New Zealand in the 1880s for an arranged marriage to a settler farmer.
Alongside carrying out jury duties Campion and Hunter will also participate in a screening of The Piano. Hunter said she was psyched at the prospect of watching it again alongside Campion. Her children, who have accompanied her to Taormina and never seen the film, will also be in audience
“It’s been 20 years since I last saw it,” she said, before giving a shoutout to all the youngsters in the room, whether they be festival volunteers or filmmakers with works in the short film competition.
“Cinema is for the young… the young at heart because no matter how old you are, I always feel so young to go into a theatre to watch a movie, and just like Jane said it’s such a privilege to get to watch a movie with a jury of your peers. You absorb the movie in a different way.”
The festival kicks off in earnest this evening with an open-air screening of Season 3 of House of the Dragon in front of a 5,000-strong crowd in Taormina’s Ancient Greek Amphitheater in the presence of cast members Tom Glynn-Carney, Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell and Tim Blake Nelson.