“It’s like having San Diego with a bit of Burning Man, and some Coachella!” Emanuele Vietina on Lucca Comics and Games

The seminal European pop culture event Lucca Comics and Games is back from 30 October to 3 November and we spoke with the event’s director, Emanuele Vietina (pictured above) who communicates a very clear message: “It doesn’t really matter what the media is. What matters is to celebrate the idea!”

Lucca Comics and Games hosts a truly unique mix of comics, art, movies, gaming and live experiences that engage with fans on a whole new level. “In its DNA, we want to celebrate the dreams of our favourite Dream Makers, our favourite authors. We aim to be a community event before a consumer show and before a cultural festival. We want to have participants, not spectators.”

This year’s festival theme is ‘The Butterfly Effect’ a nod to Italian composer Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Madame Butterfly and a celebration of how singular moments and creations can influence culture on a global scale. “We look, to always try to change with new trends and new perspectives,” Vietina tells us on how they keep the event modern and relevant.

“We aim to be a community event before a consumer show and before a cultural festival.”

Talking of global, the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons is celebrating 50 years and Lucca is championing its impact on the world of pop culture with an enormous art exhibition, curated by D&D author Jon Peterson and art historian Jessica Patterson. It incorporates around 140 original pieces covering the game’s early days through what’s known as its ‘golden age’ right up to the recent fifth edition. Created in conjunction with the Uffizi Gallery the exhibition blends Italy’s commitment to culture through both modern and classical art forms.

In another move to highlight the importance of D&D, the city of Lucca is formally dedicating a public passageway to the creators of the game Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson: “It’s something very unique,” explains Vietina. The passageway acts as a bridge between the historic medieval walls and the bustling city centre: “It’s not just a street, it’s a vault! We are going to have the dungeons of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.” A touching tribute to the games masters, Gygax’s son, Luke Gygax was in attendance.

Vietina’s vision for the show is rooted in his own journey with Lucca and pop culture. Since his early days of attending American comic conventions, like San Diego Comic-Con, he’s worked hard to blend the best of American conventions with an Italian twist. “It’s like having San Diego with a bit of Burning Man, and some Coachella – all mixed in an Italian ragu,” he jokes with us when we ask him to explain just what the festival is. His approach has turned the event into a “living theatre in Tuscany”, one where pop culture seamlessly blends with Italy’s historic beauty.

Vietina’s vision for the show is rooted in his own journey with Lucca and pop culture

This year, Lucca is hosting top figures from gaming like Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnovv and Final Fantasy illustrator Yoshitaka Amano. Amano has even taken a hand in creating special posters for this year’s festival honouring Puccini’s legacy and highlighting Lucca’s proud tradition of artistic crossover.

For book lovers, the iconic R.L. Stine, master of horror for young readers, is attending the Italian festival for the first time. And for those who love a bit of genre TV, Netflix has taken over with a massive Squid Game installation, transforming the town’s amphitheater into an experiential playground where attendees can sleep in replica dormitories or risk their fate taking a run at red light, green light.

Looking back on previous events, it’s clear that Vietina has had many memorable experiences at the helm: “Larry Elmore, the author of the Dungeons and Dragons Red Box, came to Lucca. It was more than 20 years ago. I was at my very beginning and so having the artist of Dungeons and Dragons for me was ‘oh, wow, I  really did this’.”

Lucca has been running for nearly 60 years and has gone from strength to strength in the years since the global pandemic, bouncing back in 2021 with the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: “It was great to meet the three of them, Sophia Nomvete, the queen of the dwarves and Cynthia Addai-Robinson the Númenor queen and Ismael Cruz Córdova,” Vietina remember. “Especially because it was after COVID. And so the idea was, ‘yes, we can still do something’.”

It’s clear that Lucca Comics and Games is a labour of love, and of fandom, for the show’s director, “It’s complicated to tell it’s a job, because I started volunteering in 1993 when I was seventeen, and now I’m barely 50, and I’m still doing this. So it’s basically all my life!”

Lucca Comics & Games will be taking from 30 October to 3 November. Find out more at the official website here. 

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