Magical Realism in the making | Venice Film Festival 2012

Closing off my last night at the Biennale, I was invited to walk barefoot across the Lido with Gigi, an Italian director heading to Torino, and three Lebanese artists singing in a very familiar tongue. Performance seems to be quite integral to the Venice Film festival, on and off the screen.

Around the Palazzo del Casino, the Mostra screens an extensive range of Film simultaneously around six theatres, from 08:00 till past midnight.

To the initiated, an assorted lot of burgeoning and established voyeurs, this means more time spent in theatres then in bed. A crude face with a caffè in one hand and a smart phone in another, is what being a part of the 27XCinema initiative seems to be about - a hands on approach at grounding Cinema into a palpable culture of cinephilia.

Our personal hosts for this program, Giornate Degli Autori (Venice Days) in partnership with Cine-Europa, Europa Cinemas, and the Lux Prize from the European Parliament, greet the 27 cinephiles from each Member State in the European Union on our first morning.

Rumour has it that we were individually hand-picked by the charming man with the seemingly devious stroll himself, Giorgio Gosetti, director for the Venice Days, a bearing of independent cinema, and our own Mephistopheles for the 69th edition of the Venice Film Festival.

READ MORE: Maltese cinephiles have 'no choice' but to resort to piracy

Already, I could easily picture him in my own Bulgakov epic.

Brilliant. I made it to Venice and on my first day I'm successfully convinced that this is it - Magical Realism in the making.

A gruelling marathon of what Giorgio called "Bulemic Cinema" followed in multiple languages around the 'Mostra Del Cinema'. Despite how numbingly beautiful Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth La Cinquieme Saison was twice in a row, a late night screening of an easy thrill like Bait 3D was much more than welcome after the 7th hour. I never enjoyed 3D as much as I did in the Sala Grande, a theatre which usually houses red carpet glamour but for this particular night, its projection broke down midway through a shark attack in a supermarket.

Spring Breakers, directed by Harmony Korine, featuring James Franco and a crew of women snatched from the Disney channel, was one of those glamorous premieres. The story is a leap into the world of American debauchery within an enigmatic cinematography that alludes to another from the main competition, Terence Malick. Whether it is a complete piss-take or a serious one, you don't want to miss out on seeing James Franco's performance in full gangster attire, on a white piano, singing Britney Spears in a profound timbre.

Indulgent as it is, this habit of a film festival, Giorgio swiftly reminded us of Venice in its entirety, and that we should not simply forget La Serenissima. Sharing its spotlight, the 69th Venice Film Festival performs alongside the rest of the Biennale di Venezia with Common Ground, the title of this year's Biennale Architettura.

'Paparazzi' shot of James Franco following a screening of Spring Breakers

But, how can you not indulge when you realise that the possibility of any screening in the line up making it to Malta is close to zero? If I had to ask something of my own Mephistopheles, it would most definitely be something along these lines.

"How is it possible to cultivate a burgeoning cinephilia without an extensive film schedule? Does the Maltese archipelago have to resort to piracy?"

Malta, as such, still remains 'afloat' a European network, rather than actually forming part of one.

As at 2012, the red carpet slips away to make space for Retrospettiva: 80! and Venice Classics, through documentaries and restored footage alongside the main competition, Venezia69, putting cinema into context through its own heritage. Although Frederic Boyer (Tribeca Film Festival), seemed surprised when asked about this new schedule at our morning meetings in the beach Pagoda, less screenings seem to only mean one thing: more time for Spritz and ideally, more time for cinema off the screen, over coffee tables in front of the casino.

This austere landmark of a building, draped in blue alongside the glamorous red of the Sala Grande, hosts the oldest film festival in the world and leans in performance over the passers-by on

 its own terrace. I doubt cinema's presence has ever been staged as much as it has through the 69th, a moment in which the choice of Marina Abramovic, a Serbian artist who labours in between the lines of life and art, as one of this year's international jurors, only begins to make sense.

WATCH: Which films emerged triumphant at the 69th Venice Film Festival?

Intently watching her walk into the screening of Giada Colgrande's Bob Wilson's Life and Death of Marina Abramovic (Venice Days), you could sense a pedestal, a real life statue swarmed by flashes, phones and an applause which can easily turn viral after a couple of days - as in the main premise of Xavier Giannoli's feature, Superstar (Venezia 69).

Colgrande's documentary leaves a lot to be desired, but it does have some interesting clips of Bob Wilson's experimental opera, featuring her husband Willem Defoe, Antony Hergarty and Abramovic performing as herself alongside her own distraught biography, a production which she aptly called My Funeral.

It is this romantic fiction of creative resistance which Abramovic presented as her main inspiration, the same drive which Olivier Assayas provokes through his new feature, Apres Mai. In typical Assayas form, following Carlos and Cold Water, are the late 1960s and Gilles, a young man played by Clement Metayer, set within a coming-of-age narrative which deservedly won Best Screenplay.

Dabbling in the student uprising through Paris, Italy and London while painting and then film making, you begin to wonder: is Gilles a revolutionary? Is Gilles a creative-yet-politically-redundant teen? Or is it simply a case of ennui, "a bored teenager who never went to the Maldives," as Mario Monicelli did not hesitate to call himself in Monicelli, la versione di Mario.

It is missing a movie rather than looking for a favourite that drove my own gambit, as experience teaches you that walking out of a screening becomes a necessary risk that sometimes needs to be taken.

As hyped up as Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master was, I had to miss out on its initial screening for a press conference with Enzo D'Alo and The Women's Tales collection (dir. Zoe Cassavetes, Lucrecia Martel, Giada Colgrande and Massy Tadjedin).

Pinnochio (Venice Days), with music by the late Lucio Dalla, is a story about the creative impulse, which Enzo D'Alo himself had to face while directing this fully animated feature. The Women's Tales section of the Venice Days allowed for an intimate look at transformation as well.

However, all four MiuMiu shorts speak more about creativity in general than anything particular to women. Changing the entire female cast of each short to the male of the species would most probably have left their end quite intact.

Though this issue did surprise each director under investigation through the Venice Classics section in Noelle Deschampe's Conteurs d'Images as well; Emir Kusturica, Frank Pierson, Michel Gondry and the like were all stumped when Deschampe asked: "What kind of woman would you be?"

Swarming out of the press room as Michael Mann - acclaimed Hollywood director of Heat, The Inside Man and head of the international jury - handed the Leone d'Oro to Kim Ki Duk for Pieta, I ran to find a place in Sala Darsena. Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack had been haunting me throughout the entire festival over the Mostra del Cinema and now, as it has taken both the Leone d'Argento and Volpi Cups, The Master was being holstered in 70mm on an almost equal footing with the Golden Lion.

With a healthy dose of Vanity, the 69th Venice Film Festival not only debuted some of my favourite stories from up-and-coming directors like Miguel Gomez, Rusukan Chkonia and Amir Manor but also questioned what cinema really is.

Under its own lens, the Mostra performs cinema as a theatre production - a stage where ideas are more like encounters under a special cinematic guise.

Aidan Celeste travelled to the Venice Film Festival as part of 27XCinema, a pan-European 'cinephile network' bringing together young film enthusiasts.