On Thursday 5 September 2003, a large picture of George Clooney covered two thirds of the front page of The Times. The picture was accompanied by the following lines: “George Clooney was in Venice yesterday for the première of his latest film Intolerable Cruelty, in which he stars with Catherine Zeta-Jones. In the film, which is not in competition at the festival, Clooney plays a divorce lawyer and Zeta-Jones a ‘serial divorcee.’ Still single, the actor was asked by an Italian journalist to marry her. ‘Finally,’ he joked.” George Clooney attended the film festival in Venice for the promotion of INTOLERABLE CRUELTY (USA: 2003), written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The female Italian television journalist “proposed” during the well-attended press conference for Intolerable Cruelty in the festival palace on the Lido. It turned out to be not some casual remark, but a carefully-planned joke, complete with wedding attributes such as rings, rice and a veil.

The act itself is not surprising. Many of the press conferences during that 60th edition of the Mostra were obviously servicing various personal interest issues and by the end of each session, groups of journalists were charging the stage to get autographs from the stars. What was, at first sight, a little surprising about the Clooney picture, was the decision by The Times to put this on the front page. The format of the front page picture is a combination of an oversized photograph of a celebrity with some juicy details in a concise subtext, is more reminiscent of gossip magazines or tabloids than of a quality newspaper like The Times. Even more surprising is that the Clooney picture was the only festival topic covered by The Times that year. There were no reviews of the films, no background articles, interviews, or festival analyses.

This example illustrates the broad interest media may have in film festivals. Festival programmes indeed are not limited to showing “art cinema” but present both “high” and “low” culture. They help generate media attention for artworks and popular culture products alike. The example further shows that the distinction between “high” and “low” culture is not a very useful one when trying to assess the cultural role that film festivals play in the larger festival network.