Over 30 films are in the retrospective entitled Spaghetti Western Films - The Secret History of Italian Cinema 4 and are just part of the tribute which the 64th Venice Film Festival (29thAugust – 8th September 2007) will pay to the Western movie genre.

Many contemporary directors are still deeply influenced by Westerns; proof of this lies in the world premiere screenings lined up for the coming Festival: Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Venezia 64 in competition), Miike Takashi’s Sukiyaki Western Django (Venezia 64 in competition) and Alex Cox’s Searchers 2.0 (in the Orizzonti section).
The classical western film will be celebrated in collaboration with the Giornate del Cinema Muto of Pordenone, with the world premiere screening of the restored version of The Iron Horse (1924) by John Ford (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievements in 1971), one of the masterpieces of silent film about the heroic construction of the first transcontinental railway. This will be screened alongside Nick Redman’s documentary Becoming John Ford and the rediscovery of five Budd Boetticher western film genre masterpieces, all presented in a version that has returned them to their original splendour. Budd Boetticher was a famous American director whose series of films shot in the 50s were considered classics of the genre; despite being mainly low-budget films, they gained immediate success with both critics and the public.