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New Oscar CEO Starts Fall Festival Tour

New Oscar CEO Bill Kramer has kicked off the Fall Festival tour, saying the Academy’s future “is with international cinema.”

Bill Kramer, the new CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, on Tuesday, August 30, kicked off a world tour of the 2022 fall film festivals in Venice. The aim is for the Academy to cater to the increasing percentage of its international membership.

Kramer was part of a panel on “the values of cinema in global society.” The panel also included Venice Film Festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera and Nicola Maccanico, CEO of Italian studio giant Cinecittà. The world tour starts at the Venice festival’s 90th anniversary and stops in Telluride, Toronto, and London.

The new CEO said about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on festivals, “I think there were many of us that thought: will festivals ever be in-person festivals again? [but] I think we’ve come out the other side, and we’ve seen now how critically important in-person festivals are for the health of our cinema ecosystem.”

Kramer also revealed that 25 percent of Oscar members are outside the United States. He stated that the future of the Academy and the Oscars “is with international cinema as well as national cinema.” He further noted that Bong Joon-ho’s Korean drama Parasite, winning Best Picture in 2020, “really changed people’s perspective of the Oscars.”

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