Hollywood strikes robbed the Venice Film Festival of some of its usual glitz as it launched its 80th edition on Wednesday as jury president Damien Chazelle said it was a warning that the industry must prize "art over content".
The festival is featuring a raft of big-name directors across its 11-day schedule, including new films from Bradley Cooper, Sofia Coppola and David Fincher.
But many stars are missing due to the historic double strike in Hollywood, primarily over pay and the potential impact of AI technology.
Chazelle, director of La La Land and Whiplash and head of this year's jury, wore a top showing his support for the strike.
"There's a basic idea that each work of art has value unto itself, that it's not just a piece of content -- Hollywood's favourite word right now," he told reporters.
"It really comes down to that idea of people being remunerated for each piece of art that is made and can we find a way to get back that idea of art over content."
The world's longest-running film festival was due to start with Challengers, a tennis romance with Zendaya, one of the biggest stars of her generation, but the strike caused it to be replaced by an Italian war drama, Comandante.
Indie stars
The rest of the line-up was largely unaffected: the festival will see Emma Stone as a Frankenstein-like creature in Poor Things and Cooper as legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein in Maestro, among several Oscar contenders.
But the strikes mean those stars will not be lighting up the red carpet.
Adam Driver has an exemption to show up for Ferrari on Thursday because the biopic by Michael Mann (Heat) was made outside the studio system.
The same is expected for Jessica Chastain, whose new film Memory marks her first outing since her Oscar-winning turn in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
'Apocalyptic ideas'
Other entries include Coppola's Priscilla, about Elvis Presley's wife, and Fincher's The Killer starring Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton.
They are among 23 films competing for the top prize Golden Lion, to be awarded on 9 September by a jury that also includes directors Jane Campion, Martin McDonagh and last year's winner Laura Poitras (for Big Pharma documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed).
Despite supporting the strikes, Chazelle said that the threat from AI, which many fear could lead to computer-generated actors and scripts replacing humans, should not be overblown.
"People have some apocalyptic ideas about it," he said. "It will overturn a lot of things, but the art will survive."
Source: AFP
