AsoloArtFilmFestival origins date back to 1973 when, by Flavia Paulon intuition and foresight of a local government decided to support the cultural revival of the town, the Film Festival on Art and Artists’ Biographies was born in Asolo and was soon designed to become since the first edition, one of the most important reviews of Films on the world.

Flavia Paulon, critic, essayist and civil servant at the Cinema Festival of Venice for orty years, was upset because the Biennale, following the challenge of ’68, had left the International Exhibition of Films on Art and all other minor film festivals.
So it was that a few years later, when she was presented the opportunity to create an independent review of the Films on the town of Asolo, she didn’t let it out because she knew it was an important opportunity of enrichment for the entire world cinema. Moreover, Asolo, because of its history and its beauty, was the right place to achieve it.

The festival thus began in 1973. Flavia Paulon, besides having been the founder, has been its artistic director until 1982, for a total of over 10 editions, and under his direction the review saw a time of great success on an internationale level. The festival, sponsored by UNESCO, presented each year “the best new works in Italy and worldwide, on the specific topic of art, produced in two years”. Fulchignoni Henry, President of the International Council for Cinema and Television, became a permanent member of the jury.

To ensure the quality and the international vocation of the Festival, Flavia Paulon always took great care in selecting the members of the jury, inviting prominent people in the field of cinema and visual arts, such as: the art critics Perocco Guido, Umbro Apollonio and François Le Targat, film critics such as Mario Verdone, and Ivaldi Nedo, the famous French art dealer Aimé Maeght and the Belgian director Henri Stork.

The selection of films for the competition was preceded by a thorough and systematic research work, Flavia carried out personally, thanks to its expertise in film and her contacts with important people able to find film of insight, accumulated over many years of work at the Venice Film Festival.

The selection was so strict and the level so high that within a few editions the prestige of the Festival was known throughout the world. In fact if you scroll the list of over four hundred titles of films that have contributed during the first ten years, you can find names of famous artists or directors such as Alain Resnais, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jean Rouch, Henri Stork, Luciano Emmer, George Treves, Plessi, Gaetano Pesce, Luca Verdone. The Festival started being qualified since the first edition, giving the Grand Prix Asolo to Tarkovsky’s film Andrej Rubliov on the life of the famous Russian miniaturist, author of some of the finest miniatures of the fifteenth century.

The main purpose of the review was to show works that otherwise would not have been possible to see and know, filling the spaces left empty by television and large distribution.
Asolo Festival has succeeded fully in its intent because its quality and originality are also an important model for other reviews that have emerged subsequently in the world. If the event has been successful but was also because he could count on the support of a local authority believes it to be a resource for the area.
When this trust had failed, in the ’90s, the history of Asolo review was cut short.

The festival was reborn in 2001 under the name AsoloArtFilmFestival and 2002 was established AIAF - AsoloInternationalArtFestival, a non-profit association whose main purpose is to revive and strengthen the Festival. The hope was that the importance of the Fil Festival could once again be understood and supported. It has been a good wish, considering that AIAF is still proposing the AsoloArtFilmFestival getting every year more and more success. It is enough to say that since 2001 more than 5000 works arrived from 86 countries of the world.