RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is well poised to be an attractive filming location for Hollywood and independent filmmakers, Valentina Castellani-Quinn, president and chair of Quinn Studios Entertainment in Los Angeles, has told Arab News’ “The Mayman Show.”
Speaking as the first guest of the show’s latest season, Castellani-Quinn said: “People assume that Saudi is just desert. But, actually, there is so much greenery, water and rock formations that it can look like any place, really, from Spain to Jordan or any other environment.
“So, it offers way more than people would think,” added the daughter-in-law of the late legendary Mexican American actor Anthony Quinn.
The international producer said she was mesmerized by the modernity of Saudi studios and how they have already attracted major Hollywood productions.
As an international producer who has a focus on independent films, Castellani-Quinn said that even smaller international independent projects can be shot and produced in the Kingdom: “So, that brings me then, of course, to my willingness to open Quinn Studios Saudi and create a bridge with Hollywood, with filmmaking, inviting everybody to have a new experience in filmmaking,” she added.
Castellani-Quinn, the first guest of the eighth season of “The Mayman Show,” was born in Florence, Italy, into a family whose legacy in the performing arts dates back to the 1800s. She has spent a lifetime immersed in storytelling, and as an actress, producer and international advocate for cinema, also serves as an artistic director for the Matera International Film Festival. Through her work in film, culture and education, she has become a strong supporter of international collaboration, including with Saudi Arabia’s rapidly evolving film industry.
“I have to say that coming to the Middle East from Hollywood — it’s a big jump,” she said.
“What I found extraordinary was the openness, the modernity and the sense of inclusion. That was the message of Red Sea Film Festival, a festival that has nothing to envy to Sundance.
“You know, it is very contemporary, it is very independent, it is full of personality, and yet you can find people from everywhere joining the festival.”
She added that the Red Sea Film Festival is already proven to be a unique and stellar platform that has already attracted filmmakers from around the world, including the US, Canada and Europe.
“Even the way they positioned the festival with that big kind of open square where everybody meets in the middle of the desert, I think is fantastic,” she said.
Castellani-Quinn also elaborated on her personal loss after the death of her husband, Francesco Quinn, in 2011, and how it influenced her outlook on life and resilience.
The creation of Quinn Studios Entertainment was the realizing of an ambition long held by Castellani-Quinn and her late husband.
“So, I always tell the story, you know, that in the first months after Francesco died, his reading glasses were always on the bedside table and I used to take them in and handle them tight, like a handle that would prevent me from falling,” she said.
One night, she took her late husband’s glasses and opened her hand to let them fall: “Because to take courage in our life is always feeling like falling, falling freestyle, and the fear is where it is going to bring me.”
Castellani-Quinn added that there are instances where we allow the universe to guide us to be propelled toward amazing discoveries.
“And that’s how Quinn Studios Entertainment was born,” she said. “A year later, we had our first film that was running for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, ‘The Butterfly’s Dream’.”
Castellani-Quinn highlighted the influence of her father-in-law, the late two-time Academy Award winner and legendary Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn.
“People think Anthony Quinn is of Italian, Arabic, Greek, Mexican, American (ancestry) and so on, because he was capable of embracing and becoming those characters and their initiative, not just physically, but to embody the soul of that country,” she said.
“I think that no actor, even up to nowadays, embodied the personality, the soul, the intensity, the depth of the Middle Eastern Arabic culture as much as Anthony Quinn in his roles from ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ ‘The Message,’ (as the character) Omar Al-Mukhtar (in ‘The Lion of the Desert”) and so many others.”
She credited her father’s success to his immersive approach of deepening his understanding of Middle Eastern cultures.
That approach still resonates in Castellani-Quinn and Quinn Studios Entertainment.
“It is easy to speak about Oscar nominations and awards, and things. But I always want again to go back to our core of who we are as human beings, because I always feel connected to a story, to a film, to what I do, if it has a thread where we can all learn and then bring us back to our human aspect, I think it is very, very important nowadays,” she said.
Castellani-Quinn is scheduled to hold TED Talks during November in Saudi, an opportunity she said would allow her to connect with people on a human level.
“You know, whether it’s my profession, but it’s always how I present myself in a new country as a producer, and a woman producer,” she said.
At the conclusion of her interview with “The Mayman Show,” Castellani-Quinn invited the Saudi film industry to experience the Matera International Film Festival in Italy from Sept. 26 to Oct. 3.
