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.

Once again the Venice Film Festival becomes the world capital of technological innovation. This follows the screenings of numerous films in Digital Cinema in recent editions of the Venice Film Festival, including Final Fantasy VII by Tetsuya Nomura, Bobby by Emilio Estevez, Children of Men by Alfonso Cuarón, INLAND EMPIRE by David Lynch, Para entrar a vivir by Jaume Balagueró, The Magic Flute by Kenneth Branagh and Sanxia haoren (Still Life) by Jia Zhangke. The first Film Festival in history continues to demonstrate its focus on Digital Cinema and stresses its ability to guarantee – through systems respecting the international specifications shared and ratified by DCI and SMPTE – screenings offering extraordinary purity of sound and a perfect image, thus offering the viewer films in their original quality, as desired by their directors and production teams.

For the first time in the history of film festivals, the Venice Film Festival will screen an entire film in 3D Stereoscopic Digital Cinema. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas will be shown with the use of highly advanced technological solutions to assure viewers in the Sala Grande the best possible visual quality, just as the film’s director wished. This has been made possible thanks to the constant work and collaboration of La Biennale di Venezia’s Digital Cinema Team and the Disney Production Team. If better-known and effectively managed, 3D stereoscopic cinema can lead the world’s film industry to new levels of excellence in the world of the digital era.

The most famous Venetian monument was built towards the end of the 16th century but the first bridge crossing the Grand Canal (from the Fondamenta del Vin to the Fondamenta del Ferro, as today’s bridge) was probably built on barges around the 12th century and two wooden bridges were built in the following 3 centuries. To have an idea of what the second bridge looked like, go to Gallerie dell’Accademia: it features in a painting by Carpaccio. On the wooden bridges too there were numerous shops and the one in the painting even had a drawbridge to enable sailing vessels with masters to pass. Around the second half of the 15th century this bridge risked collapsing, so the Senate decided to build a new one. The most famous architects of the time, among whom Palladio, Michelangelo and Sansovino, participated to the competition but finally a minor architect obtained the job: Antonio Scarpagnino.

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Theatre and multimedia technology to tell the story of the city of Venice in English. 

Carnival The Show, that takes place just behind Piazza San Marco, in  the newly restored Teatro San Gallo, is the coolest way of spending  an evening in Venice: live theatre, music and multimedia projections, right after a standing dinner, informal just as the ritual of  aperitif in Venice.
All this to tell the story of the city of Venice.

A show that blends theatre, music and food, to tell the story of  Venice through an emotional involvement.

Hi-quality surround sound, live narration and eleven hi-definition  projectors controlled by specially designed software to manage a  visual environment make of this show a wholly immersive experience.

The show is put on stage by a staff of professionals of the  entertainment world who belong to Broadway and London’s West End,  starring Venetian actors and theatre performers. It begins with the  1913 Carnival to narrate, through flashbacks and visions, the story  of the Republic of Venice from its origins onwards.

The task of narrating the history of Venice through its culinary  tradition is carried out by one of Italy’s best renown chefs,  Alessandro Circiello, whose cooking is described by the Italian  newspaper La Repubblica as follows: ”the result of a fine balance  between the tradition and the new gastronomic concept, …

Stefania Sandrelli (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Venice in 2005), one of the most loved and sought-after Italian actresses of all time, inspiring muse of many of the most important Italian directors, an actress whose career has often followed the history of the Festival step by step (many of the films she has appeared in were shown in Venice, from Partner by Bernardo Bertolucci, to A Talking Picture - Um filme falado, by Manoel de Oliveira, from Son and Daughters - Figli/Hijos, by Marco Bechis, to Te lo leggo negli occhi by Valia Santella), will host the closing ceremony of the 64th Venice Film Festival, to be held on 8th September in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema. She will be accompanied by La Biennale di Venezia’s President, Davide Croff, and the 64th Venice Film Festival Director, Marco Müller.

The evening’s events include the announcement of the Official Prizes for the 2007 edition, and also the awarding of the 75th anniversary Golden Lion to Bernardo Bertolucci, who Sandrelli worked with on Partner (1968), The Conformist (Il conformista, 1970), 1900 (Novecento, 1976) and Stealing Beauty (Io ballo da sola, 1996). The awards ceremony will be followed by the screening of Blood Brothers (Tiantang kou) by Alexi Tan, Out of Competition.

New décor by the Maestro Dante Ferretti and new graphic restyling by the studio Graph X.

In honour of the 75th Anniversary of the Venice Film Festival the Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia has invited the Oscar winning Dante Ferretti to revisit the external décor of the Palazzo del Cinema, which he himself designed in 2004 and has been part of the Mostra for the last 3 years. The big steel sphere which Ferretti created with Federico Fellini for the masterpiece Prova d’Orchestra (1979), will be the main characteristic element of the new décor which will be visible to the public at the 64th Mostra (29 August – 8 September 2007).

The new décor designed by Ferretti is in line with the philosophy of La Biennale, i.e. that in the year the Venice Film Festival celebrates its 75th anniversary it will find its future by looking into its past. Dante Ferretti declared: “The sphere that smashed into the wall of the thirteenth-century Chapel in Prova d’Orchestra was a symbol of demolition, of destruction, but also a metaphor for a future reconstruction, of a vision capable of surpassing the chaos of the present and the precariousness of circumstance. ”.

The studio Graph.x - Lissoni Associati has integrated the project devised by Dante Ferretti with new graphics which characterises all parts of the Mostra and incorporates communication materials (from posters to large backdrops), singling out one graphic subject, the Lion of Venice, but depicting it in a different way. The Lion of Venice will thus no longer be merely an emblem of the city and of cinematographic manifestation, but will become a cue, a starting point for other forms, as in a light show or Chinese shadow dance, a metamorphosis of luminous figures on a screen.

1 september 2007

Venice Lido, Sala Grande

This year’s awaited surprise Midnight movie has been revealed. The 64th Venice Film Festival presents the world premiere of Blade Runner: The Final Cut (2007), the definitive version of Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece, starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah and Joanna Cassidy.

To celebrate Blade Runner’s twenty-fifth anniversary, that already screened out of competition at the Venice Film Festival in 1982, the director Ridley Scott (Alien, Hannibal and a three-time Oscar® nominee, Best Director, for Gladiator, Thelma & Louise and Black Hawk Down) has returned to post-production work on the film in order to create the eagerly awaited new version, Blade Runner: The Final Cut, restored, re-mastered and scanned at 4K resolution, featuring previously unreleased and extended scenes, new improved special effects and with a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, all of which the 64th Venice Film Festival will be presenting, as a world premiere, on Saturday 1st September at midnight in the Sala Grande, in the presence of  Ridley Scott.

Blade Runner, a post-modern classic, sci-fi and cyberpunk film noir, is based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, an author whose work has repeatedly been adapted to the big screen (Total Recall, Minority