runs 2 to 18 October 2008

77 composers and 34 concerts performed by 13 leading ensembles –instrumental and vocal– 3 orchestras, 8 solists, and meetings, seminars, workshops to form a rich, packed programme for the 52nd International Festival of Contemporary Music, to be held in Venice between the 2nd and 18th October 2008.
Roots / Future, the title chosen for the Festival by the new director, Luca Francesconi, is the underlying theme of the “tale” that unfolds through the concerts planned. In each of them, the roots co-exist with the future: young composers or from the mid-generation, whether newcomers or established, appear alongside some great masters who have left their mark on 20th-century music and beyond, in a series of references multiplying the meanings and offering new significance to the works presented.
For Francesconi,  Roots / Future means “reflecting about that which has left a trace, starting with the young

The new series of screenings and restorations of the 65th Venice Film Festival (27 August - 6 September 2008), directed by Marco Müller and organised by La Biennale di Venezia, will be dedicated to These Phantoms: Italian Cinema Rediscovered (1946 – 1975). The project has been realised by the Festival in co-production with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia – Cineteca Nazionale, the institutional organization responsible for promoting and restoring the Italian film heritage, with the support of the Ministry for Cultural Affairs.
As part of the Permanent activities and cultural collections that have been rediscovered and restored, the selection of These Phantoms: Italian Cinema Rediscovered (1946 – 1975) represents the ideal continuation of the work started in 2004 and which, for all of the last four years, has successfully revived little-known areas of Italian cinema (Italian Kings of the Bs, The Italian underground, Casanova on the Screen, Tribute to Fulvio Lucisano, Rossellini centenary, Soldati, Visconti, Italian-style Westerns), alongside the international workshops of the Secret History of Asian cinema in 2005 and the Secret History of Russian cinema in 2006.
The These Phantoms: Italian Cinema Rediscovered (1946 – 1975) retrospective is curated by Tatti Sanguineti and Sergio Toffetti and comprises the screening of about 30 films made during the three finest decades of Italian cinema: namely between 1946 and 1975.

August 27 – September 6 2008

The following jurors have been nominated to join president Wim Wenders on the International Jury for the Competition of the 65th Venice Film Festival, directed by Marco Müller and organized by the Biennale di Venezia.
They are Russian screenwriter Juriy Arabov, a significant voice in contemporary Russian cinema; Italian actress Valeria Golino, the winner of the Coppa Volpi in Venice at the early age of twenty, and one of the most beloved Italian actresses abroad; British visual artist Douglas Gordon(photo), internationally renowned and acknowledged by major artistic institutions throughout the world; American cult filmmaker John Landis, who experiments in virtually every film genre with a scathing, satirical point of view; young director Lucrecia Martel, the most significant female voice in New Argentine Cinema; and Hong Kong director Johnnie To, representing the best contemporary Asian cinema and who has featured prominently in the recent history of the Venice Film Festival.
On September 6th, the closing night of the Festival, the Venice 65 International Jury will award the following prizes to the feature-length films in competition: the Golden Lion for Best Film, the Silver Lion for Best Director, the Special Jury Prize, the Coppa

august 29th, 2008
Burn After Reading, written and directed by Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen, will open the 65th Venice Film Festival at Lido di Venezia, to be held from 27th August to 6th September 2008, directed by Marco Müller and organised by La Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta.
The film, starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, and Brad Pitt, will be given its world premiere on the evening of 27th August in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema, following the opening ceremony of the 65th Festival.

In the dark spy-comedy, Mr. Malkovich plays an ousted CIA official whose memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise Washington, D.C. gym employees intent on exploiting their find. The director of photography on Burn After Reading is Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men). Mary Zophres is the costume designer, marking her eighth consecutive feature with the Coens. Jess Gonchor, production designer on No Country for Old Men, encores in that capacity on Burn After Reading.

The film series, organised on the occasion of the late opening of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, will counterpoint the iconography of the show Coming of Age. American Art, 1850s to 1950s with four journeys into the world in which the average American lives and is (cinematically) immersed. More precisely, the films examina the environment of American cinema as a physical, topographical place and as a projection of desire, anxiety, nostalgia, hope and terror: four films representing the moral as well as physical models of the American soul.

2 July, 9 pm. The innocent gaze at the environment. The series begins with Edwin Porter’s classic silent film The Great Train Robbery (1903, 11 min), the first film in the history of cinema to utilize a rudimentary form of montage.

9 July, 9 pm. An impossible desire for idyllic nostalgia. Terrence Mallick’s Days of Heaven (1978, 94 min), a retrospective look at the young America of the 1910s, sees Hollywood cinema confronting the classic dichotomy of city life and country life.

16 July, 9 pm. (Rain) people on the move. With the film The Rain People (1969, 101 min), the young Francis Ford Coppola confronts the rapport between the individual and environment in flux, typical of many on the road genre films.

23 July, 9 pm. Terror on the post-atomic horizon. For this fourth “environment” an atypical film noir was chosen, one of the last of the genre of these American classics: Kiss Me Deadly (1955, 106 min) by Robert Aldrich.

The president of the International Jury for the Competition of the 65th Venice Film Festival (27th of August to 6th September 2008), will be one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation, the German director Wim Wenders, who has formed close ties with the Festival over the years.

Indeed, Wenders appeared at the Lido already in 1972 with his first feature, The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty Kick (Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter), and won the Golden Lion 10 years later with The State of Things (Der Stand der Dinge), the first in a series of important awards that have led him to the forefront of international cinema.

The director’s output has coincided frequently with the Venice Film Festival during recent decades. In 1989, he presented Lightning over Water in the Mezzogiorno-Mezzanotte section; in 1985, he presented Docu Drama at the International Critics’ Week; in 1994, his Arisha, the Bear and the Stone Ring (Arisha, der Bär und der steinerne Ring)

On the occasion of the exhibition Coming of Age. American Art, 1850s to 1950s and thanks to the collaboration of Vodafone, the museum will introduce an innovative audio-guide that the public will be able to download, via bluetooth and fre of charge, on mobile phones. Philip Rylands, director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, will thus ‘accompany’ visitors through the exhibition galleries, examine the works exhibited nad the respective artistic movements.
Audio-guides are available in English and Italian. The necessary information to dowload the audioguide is available at the ticket desk.
From June 28 to October 12, a text message service is available to receive more information on the museum.
If you would like to receive news and updates on the summer programs of the museum, please send the text message “PEGGY” to +39.340.4399.055. If you would like to download the audio-guide via GPRS prior to your arrival to the

September 14th to November 23rd, 2008

The 11th Architecture Biennale is curated by Aaron Betsky and organised by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta and it will take place in Venice (Giardini and Arsenale) from September 14th to November 23rd.
With the inclusion of Frank Gehry and Matthew Ritchie among the 21 Installations at the Arsenale Corderie, and with the addition of 15 new firms to within the section Experimental Architecture (reaching now 55 firms exhibiting) at Padiglione Italia in the Giardini, the list of participants to the 11th International Architecture Exhibition - Out There: Architecture Beyond Building has been completed.
Frank Gehry and Matthew Ritchie are the two new and prestigious presence among the Installations at Corderie dell’Arsenale, large site-specific installations questioning how can we feel “at home” in the world. The Installations will be accompanied by Manifestos focusing on an “architecture beyond building”, while Hall of Fragments by David Rockwell together with Casey Jones + Reed Kroloff will open the Corderie dell’Arsenale.
Another piece of news, the section Experimental Architecture – the survey on experimentation at Padiglione Italia, curated with the collaboration of Emiliano Gandolfi and showing architects from all over the world- is enriched by 15 more firms reaching 55 participants. This recognition will be held together by small monographic exhibition of Masters of the Experiment who based their work on experimental architecture: Frank Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron, Morphosis, Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au.
On the second floor at Padiglione Italia, Upload City – in collaboration with Saskia van Stein – will present videos from You Tube and similar sources showing experimental architecture produced by (and for) the next generation.
Within Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, the Arsenale Artiglierie will host Uneternal City. Trent’anni da “Roma

7th – 21st July 2008

St. Mark’s Square is the centre of Venice, or the favourite destination of each tourist, thanks to its unique whole of monuments we can admire: the Basilica, the New and Old Procuratie, the Napoleonic Palace and its historical cafés. From today, by clicking the digital image of a tile of Palazzo Ducale on one’s mobile phone, it will be possible to contribute to the preservation and upkeep of St. Mark’s Square in Venice. Such initiative, called ‘Sms Venice’  is part of that programme according to which a series of summer concerts have been planned by the Venetian Town Hall for the Marciana area, running from 7th to 21st July 2008.

This year five concerts will be held in St. Mark’s: the series will be opened on 8th July with Momix’s performance, Elton John’s one is planned for 9th July; we are looking forward to the performance of the great pianist Giovanni Allevi on 14th July. The show will end on 22nd with a concert for Emergency: the singers will be Joan Baez and Vinicio Capossela, and the master of ceremonies will be Mara Venier.

The public of such events and those going around St. Mark’s Square will be kept up to date with the quantity of sms already sent, by means of a lighting mechanism of the pixels composing the image of the façade of Palazzo Ducale,

8^th June – 21^st September 2008

On 8^th June the usual summer initiative was started by Aperol, namely the partner of Intrapresae Guggenheim Collection, which for a long time has accompanied and freshened the Sundays of the people visiting the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

From 8^th June to 21^st September, all Sunday mornings, Piero Ballarin, a creative Venetian barman, will offer the well-known ‘spritz’ to those who will decide to spend a part of their day among Picasso’s, Kandinsky’s Pollock’s, Chagall’s, Magritte’s and De Chirico’s masterpieces.

People will have the opportunity to visit the temporary exhibition Coming of Age. American Art from 1850 to 1950 which will be held by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection from 28^th June to 12^th October. Winding inside the renewed venues of the Venetian museum, this exhibition, with more than seventy works of art among which paintings and sculptures, will display a