By Carole Rifkind and Richard Rifkind
With stunning imagery, The Venetian Dilemma portrays the fragile urban ecology of Venice besieged by 14 million tourists who far outnumber the local residents. By tracking four Venetians who are trying to make a life in this unique historic place, the themes of urban gentrification and tourist impact are raised--a problem not only for Venice but for many other urban areas.
The thread of the film is debate among ordinary Venetians and their charismatic deputy mayor, Roberto D'Agostino, about the pros and cons of plans to diversify the city1s economy by redeveloping a degraded industrial area and connecting it to the mainland by an underwater subway. Opponents of such plans doubt that the promised jobs will arrive, and believe that the subway will only serve to bring more tourists to Venice. Meanwhile, local residents face a daily struggle for a decent quality of life. Produce vendor Danilo Palmieri battles to maintain his livelihood; career woman and mother Michela Scibilia fights for day care; writer and environmentalist Paolo Lanapoppi campaigns against fast tourist-serving motorboats that are destroying the very foundations of Venice.
The documentary celebrates what makes Venice distinctive - historically, not only as a beautiful city, but one that fostered a "civilized" life style. Now, an untrammeled tourist industry has transformed it into little more than a staged urban theater, verging on a Disneyland. And the grand city-building schemes offer no guarantees that they will be the solution.
Reviews
~ "Something is way out of balance when a historic city has become such an alluring magnet that its annual tourist traffic outnumbers the resident population by more than 200 to 1. That is the situation addressed by Carole and Richard Rifkind'1s documentary, The Venetian Dilemma, which casts a sharply critical eye on plans to accelerate tourism in Venice, a city that already receives 14 million tourists a year." - Stephen Holden, The New York Times
~ "Carole and Dick Rifkind's Venetian Dilemma is richly poignant: how much we want the Venetian mother to find daycare, the grocer to stock his stand, the singers to keep on raising their glasses - in short, Venice to live! But how doomed they seem against the rising global tide of wealth and aspiration that last year alone washed 14 million tourists through the City." - Paul Spencer Byard, Director, Historic Preservation Program, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Historic Preservation Columbia University.
Notes
~ Hamptons International Film Festival, 2005
~ Environmental Film Festival, Washington, D.C., 2005
~ Green Film Festival, Seoul, 2005
~ National Trust for Historic Preservation Annual Meeting, 2005
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