Michele Dell'Ambrogio, commitment and passion for cinema

For almost fifty years the soul of the Circolo del Cinema Bellinzona and a film critic, Michele Dell’Ambrogio is the recipient this year of the Premio Cinema Ticino, the biennial award that pays tribute to a personality from our canton who has particularly distinguished themselves in the field of cinema.

The award – announced by the jury chaired by Cristina Trezzini and composed of Nicola Bernasconi, Frédéric Maire, Antonio Mariotti and Seraina Rohrer – goes to Dell’Ambrogio for his constant and passionate commitment to film criticism and the promotion of the seventh art, and for having contributed to making it closer and more accessible to the general public. Through his decades-long activity, Dell’Ambrogio has worked to increase the visibility of auteur cinema, through programming attentive to including great classics, contemporary works, and new trends.

The award will be presented on the Piazza Grande stage on the evening of Wednesday, August 13, during the 78th Locarno Film Festival. That same afternoon, Michele Dell’Ambrogio will introduce the screening of Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante at 4:00 PM at the Gran Rex.

We asked Michele Dell’Ambrogio to tell us about his commitment to cinema and how criticism and audiences have changed over the years.

What does a film club offer its audience today, and who is that audience?

“From a numerical point of view, we have an excellent audience response, and that is one of the reasons that motivates us to continue this activity. In Bellinzona, we program more than 60 films per season and have an average of over 70 people per screening, which is truly unheard of because when I go to the cinema to see the same type of films, I often find myself in a room with at most eight people. The people who attend our screenings are generally over fifty or sixty years old. So the big challenge is attracting young people: we’ve been facing this issue for many years, and we can’t solve it—and probably many others in the cultural sector can’t either. It remains an open question. We offer free admission to young people and students, but despite this, very few come. As for what we offer, we move in two directions. One concerns the past, because we believe it is very important not to forget the films that have made cinema history and that, even if already seen, are worth watching again. The other concerns contemporary cinema—the kind I call, for convenience, quality or art cinema—which is very often ignored by commercial distribution. These are, let’s say, festival-type proposals that often are not distributed or are shown only in the few art-house theaters that still (deservedly) survive, where they might remain on the program for only two or three days and then disappear.”

Do people still discuss films at a film club?

“Once upon a time there was debate (laughs, ed.), now we avoid it unless we have guests. Often, we might have directors, producers, or technicians who worked on the film. Then there’s a discussion with the audience. Otherwise, we can’t expect the audience—especially since, as mentioned, it’s not very young—to stay until midnight after a two-hour screening. Those times are gone. However, I make an effort every time to briefly introduce the film before the screening, to provide context and a few points of interpretation.”

Have you seen a change over the years in the public’s interest in cinema here in Ticino?

“Of course. Next year will mark fifty years that I’ve been doing this work, a voluntary, unpaid job. When I started, at the end of the 1970s, going to the cinema was a habit; watching certain films was a habit—a kind of cinema that has now become harder to see. There was also an interest linked to the historical moment. When we started the Circolo del Cinema di Bellizona, we had a strong political dimension. This dimension has not disappeared, but even back then, after just a few years of activity, we focused more on cinema itself, on film language, on the relationship with other arts, and on the historical importance of films.”

And what about Ticino cinema? How has it changed?

“There has been significant growth since the establishment of CISA, which has trained many young people, at least technically. There is much more production of Ticino films than in the past, and it’s worth seeing—although it is not widely seen. You see it at festivals, in film club screenings, but it doesn’t have much broader visibility. Sometimes, maybe something strong to say is missing—not in every case, of course, because there are very interesting and valuable works. In any case, it’s a production we keep an eye on and that we also try to showcase, for example, within the annual Swiss cinema series we organize, or through special screenings.”

Let me turn to Michele Dell’Ambrogio, film critic. Does today’s cinema, in your opinion, stimulate criticism, or is it something more neutral?

“It could and should stimulate criticism, but unfortunately, film criticism is in deep crisis. There used to be real film criticism; there were debates, I remember editions of the Locarno Festival where we would talk almost until dawn about the films screened. Today, there’s almost unconditional praise for practically everything that is presented. Films have the potential to be discussed, to be the subject of criticism, but they increasingly are not, they become more like phenomena that everyone feels obliged to talk about, and the interview with the director becomes more important than a critical debate.”

FC