24th November 2007.

If it’s November it must be Trieste; the science+fiction festival to be precise, my continental favourite after Sitges. Friendly, fun and intimately low key, Trieste is a terrific Italian city to spend time in anyway. Add in the many screenings and events at the Cine City multiplex programmed by Lorenzo Bertuzzi, Martina Palaskov-Begov, FrightFesters Giovanni and Chiara Barbo, always on hand to ensure things run smoothly and get you to the restaurants in time, and it’s the perfect end to the festival year for me.

Apart from helping out on the contact front, my main function this year was to take part in a panel discussion on Tim Lucas’ fabulous book, ‘Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark’. Joining me were the subject’s son Lamberto Bava, Kim Newman, Joe Dante and Lorenzo Codelli, the latter, like myself, had helped Lucas with his research. Ruggero Deodato, the CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST director, and a lovely bloke, should have joined us but got held up elsewhere. We were video-linked to Lucas, and his wife Donna, at home in Cincinnati for a lively debate on why it took an American writer to author a book on a major Italian director virtually ignored in his home country but lionised everywhere else.

Lamberto was clearly moved by Lucas’ amazing efforts and confessed he’d never even seen some of the photos of his grandfather Eugenio, unearthed by our late friend Alan Upchurch. Simultaneously translated by Trieste language students, the whole event was an informal but instructive deliberation on Italian film culture through the cinema ages.

Films you could see over the six days were such festival favourites as BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT, CHRYSALIS, DR PLONK, REC, BLACK SHEEP (I made sure the Trieste crowd got a consignment of those rubber sheep!) and the Critics Jury winner Nacho Vigalondo’s CRONOCRIMENES/TIME CRIMES. It must just be me who thinks this time travelling, murky-looking low-budgeter – a more accessible PRIMER – is remarkably average and nothing to get that excited about.

I found out after the awards ceremony that it just pipped the post over the far more original Argentine entry LA ANTENNA. Out of the entries I hadn’t seen previously, Esteban Sapir’s METROPOLIS done Guy Maddin style about the brainwashing dangers of television was far more imaginative and inventive. Elsewhere REC proved a consistent crowd pleaser – it opens in Spain this week so wish FrightFest guest director Paco Plaza and co-director Jaume Balaguero well – with BLADE RUNNER in its third-time lucky incarnation attracting the usual starry-eyed acclaim.

Joe Dante was the winner of the festival’s lifetime achievement award, the Urania D’Argento, and a retrospective of his work was one of the major strands. MATINEE, INNERSPACE, SMALL SOLDIERS, GREMLINS 2 and his influence THEM! (1954) all got shown. Prior to his acceptance speech a Trailer Trash reel he edited was run containing such ‘classic’ New World titles as STREET GIRLS, DIRTY DUCK and COVER GIRL MODELS.

It’s the second festival, after Turin, in which I’ve spent time with Dante and he’s an engaging man. He’s still trying to get his project, written by Tim Lucas, THE MAN WITH KALEIDOSCOPE EYES, off the ground. It’s a loose bio-pic about the time Dante’s one-time employer Roger Corman took LSD before making his cult movie THE TRIP in 1967. Star Tim Robbins has committed to playing the B-Movie King and Dante is slowly raising the budget bit by bit. I hope this comes off. I really want to see it. Unlike Dante’s NIGHT IN THE MUSEUM, last Christmas’ blockbuster that he was offered but turned down because he thought the script was bad. (It was the one they filmed!).

Trieste audiences reached record levels this year, a sign that finally the locals are getting with the programme and realising what a great film resource is on their doorstep. With plans to possibly stage an additional open-air summer event in the centrally located Roman amphitheatre, science+fiction clearly has ambitious plans for the future. As long as they still organise trips to Zampoli’s gelateria and provide goodies from Chocolat, you can always count me in!

Until next time…