Mike Figgis to Chair Italy's Capri-Hollywood Film Fest

ROME – Oscar-nominated director Mike Figgis will be the chairman of the 17th edition of the Capri-Hollywood International Film Festival, organizers announced Monday.

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The event, held on the Italian island of Capri, off the coast of Naples, is the last film festival in the world every year, and the first for the following year -- since it starts in December and concludes in January. This next edition runs Dec. 27-Jan. 2.

Pascal Vicedomini, the event’s founder and artistic director, said the festival this year will focus on Italian cinema and will focus on social matters, foregoing the festival’s traditional red carpet in part in order to express “solidarity” with the Italian region of Emilia Romagna, which was hit by a deadly earthquake earlier this year. Vicedomini, who also heads the Ischia Global Fest in Italy and the Los Angeles, Italia Film Fashion and Art Fest in California, said the slogan of the festival this year will be “Cinema means Solidarity.”

Figgis, who earned 1996 Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay for he gritty romantic drama Leaving Las Vegas, most recently came to Italy in connection with the International Rome Film festival in November, where his latest project, the thriller Suspension of Disbelief, screened in the festival’s CinemaXXI sidebar.

“I’m honored to named chairman of this … event, which will ring in 2013 by paying homage to Italian cinema and its traditions,” Figgis said, adding that the festival will boast “a serious array of films and events certain to make this year’s Capri, Hollywood festival the best ever produced.”

The full lineup for the event will be announced Dec. 20.