Martin Scorsese joins campaign to save Rome’s venues
Martin Scorsese has joined the campaign to save some of Rome’s most iconic venues. Italian politicians are currently voting on a measure that would see a number of cultural venues in Rome, including 50 movie theatres, into supermarkets and shopping centres.
The vote comes following a bankruptcy auction last month, during which the asset management companies Wrm Capital and Colliers Global Investors won a bid which saw them acquire nine cinemas. The asset management companies allegedly paid €50million for the venues, some of which are still running and others that have been closed for several years now.
The Hollywood endorsements come after Senator for Life Renzo Piano shared a letter about the vote. Scorsese, Willem Dafoe, Spike Lee, Wes Anderson, Mark Ruffalo, and Francis Ford Coppola have endorsed Piano’s sentiment. The director of the Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera, has also spoken out against the vote.
“As Renzo Piano eloquently reflects on the current situation in Rome,” wrote Scorsese in a statement, “It is clear that the attempt to repurpose spaces intended for the possible cultural renaissance of the Eternal City into hotels, shopping centres, and supermarkets is utterly unacceptable.”
He continued, “Such a transformation would represent an irrevocable loss: a profound sacrilege not only to the city’s rich history but also to the cultural legacy for the future generations.”
Scorsese calls upon his fellow colleagues in the film industry, asking them to step forward in a bid to help save the venues scattered across Rome. Scorsese notes the artistic importance of a city like Rome and highlights how much of a travesty it would be for such a cinematic staple to lose spaces that established it as such.
“This letter is also personally addressed to President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to prevent any conversion of the cultural spaces in Rome,” he said, “It’s our duty to transform these abandoned ‘cathedrals in the desert’ into true temples of culture, places capable of nourishing the souls of both present and future generations.”
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