VENICE: Officially its full title is the International Exhibition of the Cinematographic Arts.

Yet the top prize at this year’s edition of the Venice Film Festival could be handed to a film destined to barely see the inside of a cinema but which will be available to watch on laptops, tablets and mobile phones from the moment it is released on October 16.

“Beasts of No Nation,” Cary Fukunaga’s child soldier drama, is the first Netflix feature film to be included in competition for a major film prize.

And regardless of whether or not it wins, the fact that a video-on-demand service has been able to place its content at the heart of the world’s oldest film festival is being seen as something of a landmark moment for an industry on the cusp of far-reaching change in the way its output is consumed.

Festival Director Alberto Barbera said he had not hesitated about including “Beasts” in the 21-strong selection of films competing for the Golden Lion.

Streaming-based distribution services are becoming important sources of finance for filmmaking and “we can’t ignore them”, he argues.

Cinema owners are less open-minded with many refusing to provide slots for films simultaneously released to Internet subscribers on the grounds that this will kill the culture of going out to see films on a big screen -- and sooner or later put them out of business.

In the case of a film like “Beasts” the issue is arguably moot since the challenging nature of the film means it was only ever likely to get a limited, art-house cinema run.

But it is a question that can only become more acute as the volume and range of original production from online distributors expands.Netflix has already signed Adam Sandler up to make four films for them and the company has funded the “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” sequel “The Green Legend” — now due to be released early next year, possibly with an eye on Netflix’s planned expansion in Asia.

Set in an unidentified West African country and shot in 22 different locations in Ghana, “Beasts” unflinchingly recounts the story of Agu, a happy-go-lucky boy whose joyous existence as part of a loving family is turned on its head after his village in a UN-protected buffer zone is overrun by government troops seeking to quell a rebellion.

Meanwhile Amazon Prime have commissioned Spike Lee to make their first Oscar-eligible feature, a musical comedy about gun crime in Chicago called “Chiraq”.—AFP

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2015

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