On June 10th, 1940, Italy declared war: the echoes of the conflict were heard at the Venice Film Festival, though in terms that were still triumphant. The Minister Alessandro Pavolini came to Venice, to participate in a special screening for the soldiers at the Teatro Rossini: “When he appeared on the central stage”, reports the announcer, “the 500 soldiers that crowded the theatre jumped to their feet to acclaim him. A salute to the king and to the Duce introduced the world premiere screening of the festival dedicated with brotherly solidarity to our soldiers on land, sea and sky”.
Rigorous climate of war at the Venice Film Festival, in which “seventeen nations which embrace all of Europe in its active, healthy, working part”, says the announcer. The clip shows Ministers Pavolini and Goebbels at a performance reserved for the armed forces and the screening of the German film Ritorno.
The first post-war Venice Film Festival espoused the “principle of quality”, “which alone can inspire the new civilization for which millions and millions of men fought and died”, says the announcer. In the film clip from the Archivio Storico Luce we can see, among others, the first President of the Italian Republic Enrico De Nicola, the Minister Pietro Nenni, the President of the Biennale Giovanni Ponti, Count Zorzi and Massimo Bontempelli. The inaugural event features screenings of the documentary films L’Italia s’é desta and Blood and Sand by Rouben Mamoulian. “People in cinema”, recites the clip, “made peace long ago with Italy, and the programme of the Venice Film Festival is here to prove it: Great Britain, Russia, the United States, France and Sweden have sent the best of their production”.
Alida Valli in the Sala Grande in 1946 for the presentation of Eugenia Grandet (Eugenie Grandet) by Mario Soldati: the first edition after the War was a temporary festival that awarded no prizes, just a series of special mentions.
In 1948 the Venice Film Festival returned to the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido, after temporarily moving to its location in the courtyard of the Doge’s Palace in Venice. “The honour of opening the Festival”, says the announcer, “went at random to the English film The Red Shoes, by Powell and Pressburger. The most prestigious film competition in the world promises this year to be of exceptional importance”.
1948: twenty-nine year old Giulio Andreotti, Under-secretary of State for the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, attends one of the screenings at the Venice Film Festival. That year Hamlet by Laurence Olivier triumphed as Best Film and Jean Simmons, in the role of Ophelia, won the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress.
The Shah of Persia visits Venice for the Film Festival, from the “monumental” city to the “resort” area on the Lido. The clip also shows Anna Magnani, the star of Roberto Rossellini’s Amore, Orson Welles, Lea Padovani.
Orson Welles and Darryl F. Zanuck on the beach on the Lido in 1948. Welles was in Venice to present Macbeth in competition, Zanuck was producing The Snake Pit by Anatole Litvak, which the following year would win the Coppa Volpi as Best Actress for Olivia de Havilland.
(Source:www.labiennale.org)
The retrospective was titled «80!» on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Venice Film Festival (1932-2012) and presented unique copies of films thought to be lost but actually existing in the Biennale’s ASAC archive collections. This was complemented by theVenice Classics section of restored classic films. The opening film was Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist; the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement was given to Italian director Francesco Rosi, who received the award from Giuseppe Tornatore. The main jury chaired by Michael Mann awarded the Golden Lion to Pieta by Kim Ki-duk and the Silver Lion and the Coppa Volpi for best actor to The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson and the two actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix. Among the stars that were on the red carpet, Robert Redford (his first-time attendance on the Lido), Michael Cimino (Persol Award), Spike Lee (Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Film-maker Award), Brian De Palma, Jonathan Demme, Kate Hudson, Liev Schreiber, Winona Ryder, Michael Shannon, Ray Liotta, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Fassbender, Isabelle Huppert, Claudia Cardinale, Noomi Rapace, Kristin Scott Thomas, Olga Kurylenko, Emmanuelle Seigner, Takeshi Kitano, Peter Brook, Liliana Cavani, Marco Bellocchio, Toni Servillo, Valerio Mastandrea, Barbora Bobulova and teen-idols such as Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron, James Franco, and Shia LaBeouf.
and George Clooney, was the opening film in 3D. The Golden Lion for lifetime achievement of the Biennale was awarded to American film director William Friedkin. The Jury of the Venice 70 competition, headed by Bernardo Bertolucci, awarded the Golden Lion to the film Sacro GRA by the Italian director Gianfranco Rosi. The Silver Lion for Best Director was awarded to Alexandros Avranasfor Miss Violence (Greece), the Grand Jury Prize went toJiaoyouby Tsai Ming-liang (Chinese Taipei). The Coppa Volpi for Best Actor was awarded to Themis Panou forMiss Violence (Greece), the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress to Elena Cottafor Via Castellana Bandiera, by Emma Dante. The Italian film master Ettore Scola received the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker award. For the occasion his film was screened, Che strano chiamarsi Federico, a homage to Federico Fellini 20 years after his passing; present at the screening was the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano. Among the other masters and stars at the Lido were Andrzej Wajda (Persol Award, awarded in the presence of Lech Walesa), Paul Schrader, Bret Easton Ellis, Mia Wasikowska, Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan, Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, James Franco, Scott Haze, Tom Welling, Daniel Radcliffe, Tom Hardy, Scarlett Johansson, Errol Morris, Terry Gilliam, Stephen Frears, Amos Gitai, Kim Ki-duk, Patrice Leconte, Pablo Larraín, Sion Sono, Edgar Reitz, Tsai Ming-liang, Wang Bing, Philippe Garrel, Anna Mouglalis, Louis Garrel, Rebecca Hall, Alan Rickman, Richard Madden, Carrie Fisher, Martina Gedeck, Virginie Ledoyen, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Jiang Wen, Ken Watanabe, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Gianni Amelio, Alba Rohrwacher, Antonio Albanese, Giuseppe Battiston, Anita Caprioli, Marco Paolini, and Carlo Verdone.
Stars on the red carpet included Al Pacino, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Chiara Mastroianni , Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield, Ethan Hawke, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Shannon, Abel Ferrara, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Andrea Riseborough , Stellan Skarsgård, Tahar Rahim, Maria De Medeiros, Anna Mouglalis, Elio Germano, Riccardo Scamarcio, Luca Zingaretti, Milla Jovovich, Ryô Kase, Anton Yelchin, Ashley Greene, Alexandra Daddario, Shinya Tsukamoto, Wang Xiaoshuai, Amos Gitai, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Ho-Sun Chan, Ann Hui, Im Kwontaek, Barry Levinson, Hong Sangsoo, Fatih Akin, David Gordon Green, Andrew Niccol, Benoît Jacquot, Xavier Beauvois, Ulrich Seidl, Aléx de la Iglesia, Ami Canaan Mann, and Michael Almereyda. Three feature films in the Biennale College – Cinema section were presented: H. by Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia, Blood Cells by Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull, and Short Skin by Duccio Chiarini. Biennale College – Cinema is a project promoted by the Biennale di Venezia since 2012 and aimed at new talents in cinema by offering them the opportunity to produce micro-budget feature films; the 12 selected projects for the 3rd edition of the Biennale College – Cinema 2014/15 were also announced. The 3rd edition of theVenice Film Market took place in dedicated spaces at the Excelsior Hotel.
In 1999, the Sala Perla alongside the historic Palazzo del Cinema was restructured and expanded (seating for 580), seating in the PalaBNL was increased to 1700, and the Palazzo del Casinò cinemas reserved for journalists and professionals from the world of cinema were enlarged, to an overall surface area of 11,000 sq.m.
In 2004, Marco Müller was appointed as director of the Cinema section. The festival awarded Manoel de Oliveira and Stanley Donen with the Golden Lion for Career Achievement. Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake won the Golden Lion for best film. A retrospective section was dedicated to the Secret History of Italian Cinema, whose first segment Italian Kings of the B’s was also presented in Tokyo, Milan, and London.
In 2007, the Venice Film Festival celebrated its 75th anniversary. Director Alexander Kluge, who was also born in 1932 and the winner in Venice of two Golden Lions and one Silver Lion, prepared a special retrospective program on the last 75 years in the history of cinema. A special award was created, the Golden Lion of the 75th edition, and presented to Bernardo Bertolucci. The other main awards went to Tim Burton, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, and to Ang Lee, who won the Golden Lion for best film (Lust, Caution) for the second time in the three latest editions. The retrospective section was dedicated to Spaghetti Western and presented 40 famous film belonging to that genre. The red carpet of this edition was scattered with stars such as Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Adrien Brody, Jude Law, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Susan Sarandon, Richard Gere, Fanny Ardant, Nikita Mikhalkov, Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor, Takeshi Kitano, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, and Charlize Theron, just to name the main protagonists.
In 2010, the Festival opened with Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan; the opening screening was attended by President Giorgio Napolitano. Ten years after the death of Vittorio Gassman, the Festival honoured one of the most extraordinary personalities of Italian cinema with the screening of Vittorio racconta Gassman, una vita da Mattatore, a documentary based on footage of the actor speaking about his career. The jury of the 67th Venice Film Festival awarded the Golden Lion for Best Film in Competition to Somewhere, directed by Sofia Coppola. The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement went to legendary Hong Kong movie director John Woo. Among the stars appearing on the red carpet were Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Alba, Elle Fanning, Stephen Dorff, Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall, Vincent Gallo, Willem Dafoe, Catherine Deneuve, Helen Mirren, Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike, John Turturro, Monte Hellman, Takashi Miike, Marco Bellocchio, Alessandro Gassman, and Kim Rossi Stuart. The 2010 edition saw the Orizzonti section thrown open to a vast range of productions. Even more so than in previous years, Orizzonti became the reference section for the more innovative and experimental filmmakers. The retrospective section was dedicated to Italian comedies and was titled La situazione comica (1937-1988).
Jury members Eija-Liisa Ahtila, David Byrne, Todd Haynes, Mario Martone, Alba Rohrwacher, André Téchiné, and jury president Darren Aronofsky awarded the Golden Lion to Faust by Russian director Aleksander Sokurov. Among the stars appearing on the Lido red carpet in 2011, in addition to George Clooney and Al Pacino, were Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Madonna, Abbie Cornish, Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Monica Bellucci, Louis Garrel, Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, James Franco, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, Emile Hirsch, David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Abel Ferrara, Johnnie To, and William Friedkin. The retrospective section was titled Orizzonti 1961-1978 and was dedicated to Italian avant-garde films of the 1960s-70s.
In 1990 the jury headed by Gore Vidal assigned the Golden Lion to Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in preference to the visionary emerging talent of Jane Campion. This controversial decision kindled heated debate between the public and experts, with shades of the ’50s when the juries apparently ignored Visconti’s films. An Angel at My Table only received the Jury Grand Prix. Likewise the great surprise of the following year, Raise the Red Lantern by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, did not succeed in winning the Golden Lion (it went instead to Michalkov’s Urga), however the last Festival directed by Biraghi was distinguished by a broad variety in selection, and the inclusion of young American talent such as Spike Lee and Gus Van Sant.
Of the films and filmmakers launched during Pontecorvo’s period, mention must be made of the young Italians Mario Martone (Morte di un matematico napoletano), Aurelio Grimaldi (La discesa di Aclà a Floristella), Carlo Carlei (La corsa dell’innocente at the first Festival, along with Sally Potter (Orlando) and Neil Jordan (The Crying Game).
