LIDO DI VENEZIA, 29.08 - 08.09 2018
BIENNALE CINEMA 2018
75TH VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2018
The 75th Venice International Film Festival is organised by La Biennale di Venezia, and will take place at Venice Lido from August 29th to September 8th, 2018. The Festival is officially recognised by the FIAPF (International Federation of Film Producers Association).
The aim of the Festival is to raise awareness and promote international cinema in all its forms as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue. The Festival also organises retrospectives and tributes to major figures as a contribution towards a better understanding of the history of cinema.
http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2018/75th-festival
CINEMA - 29 AUGUST 2018
VANESSA REDGRAVE GOLDEN LION FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMEN
http://www.labiennale.org/en/news/vanessa-redgrave-golden-lion-lifetime-achievement
The acknowledgement to Vanessa Redgrave to be presented on Wednesday 29 August during the Opening Ceremony.
British actress Vanessa Redgrave has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 75th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September, 2018).
The decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta, upon recommendation of the Director of the Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera. This is the second Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 75th Venice Film Festival. As already announced, the Golden Lion to a director has been awarded to David Cronenberg. Each year La Biennale assigns two Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival: the first is awarded to a director, the second to an actor or actress.
VANESSA REDGRAVE
Vanessa Redgrave declared: “I am astonished and especially delighted to hear that I will be awarded by the Venice Film Festival for a life’s work in film. Last summer I was filming in Venice in The Aspern Papers. Many many years ago I filmed La vacanza in the marshes of the Veneto. My character spoke every word in the Venetian dialect. I bet I am the only non-Italian actress to act an entire role in Venetian dialect! Thank you a million times, dear Festival!”.
The acknowledgement to Vanessa Redgrave will be presented on Wednesday 29 August during the Opening Ceremony (the evening will be by invitation only).
Alberto Barbera declared: “Unanimously considered one of today’s best actresses, Redgrave’s sensitive, infinitely faceted performances ideally render complex and often controversial characters. Gifted with a natural elegance, innate seductive power, and extraordinary talent, she can nonchalantly pass from European art house cinema to lavish Hollywood productions, from the stage to TV sets, each time offering top-quality results. In the sixty years of her professional activity, her performances have displayed authoritativeness and total control over the roles she plays, a boundless and highly sophisticated generosity, and a healthy dose of the courage and fighting spirit which are a hallmark of her compassionate, artistic nature”.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Born into a thespian family, nominated six times for an Oscar (she won in 1977 for her performance in Julia), and the winner of a Volpi Cup in Venice in 1994 for Little Odessa, for 60 years, Vanessa Redgrave has been one of the best-loved and most-sought-after actresses of international art house cinema. A stage actress as well, she has won a Tony Award and an Olivier Award for best actress.
Among her most recent works, in 2018 she performed in The Aspern Papers by Julian Landais, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Joely Richardson; Mrs Lowry & Son by Adrian Noble, with Timothy Spall; and Georgetown by Christoph Waltz, with Annette Bening. In 2017, she directed and starred in Sea Sorrow with Ralph Fiennes and Emma Thompson (produced by Carlo Nero) and she performed at the Young Vic Theatre in The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez, produced by Sonia Friedman and directed by Stephen Daldry.
Redgrave was born in London in 1937 and studied acting at London’s Central School of Music and Dance. Her family has a long and glorious tradition in film and on the stage. Her paternal grandfather, Roy Redgrave, was one of Australia’s most famous silent movie actors. Her father, Michael, and her mother, Rachel Kempson, were members of the Old Vic Theater. Her father, in particular, was also a well-known movie actor. Right from an early age, Vanessa was a successful stage actress and she debuted on the silver screen alongside her father in 1958 in the comedy Behind the Mask. She then dedicated herself to theatre and became a member of the Stratford-upon-Avon Theater Company. This is where she met director Tony Richardson, who, in the early 1960s, became her husband and directed her in Shakespeare plays. In 1966, Redgrave returned to the silver screen in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, by Karel Reisz, which won her the award for best actress at Cannes and her first Oscar nomination. Always in 1966, she performed in Blow-up by Michelangelo Antonioni. The topic of incommunicability, one of the Italian director’s favorites, found a perfect interpreter in that young, enigmatic woman who can express herself almost without speaking. One year later, Joshua Logan brought her to the United States to shoot Camelot, after which Vanessa returned to Europe for two more films directed by Richardson, The Sailor from Gibraltar, and in 1968, The Charge of the Light Brigade. That same year, she portrayed the non-conformist ballerina Isadora Duncan in Isadora (1968) by Karel Reisz (her second Oscar nomination). In 1971, she played the unlucky queen in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971, her third nomination for an Oscar), a nun in The Devils by Ken Russel, and a girl confined in a madhouse in Vacation by Tinto Brass, which stars Franco Nero and was presented at the Venice Film Festival. Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar for her performance as the brave and headstrong Julia (1977), by Fred Zinnemann. In 1984, James Ivory directed her in The Bostonians (another Oscar nomination) and in 1985 she played the lonely teacher in Wetherby (1985) by David Hare. She received her sixth Oscar nomination for her portrayal of sensitive Ruth Wilcox in Howard’s End (1992), once again by James Ivory. In 1994, she received the Volpi Cup in Venice for Little Odessa by James Gray. She played the bitter protagonist in Mrs Dalloway (1997) by Marleen Gorris and in 2007 she starred in Atonement by Joe Wright, the opening film at the Venice Film Festival that year.
CINEMA - 29 AUGUST 2018
FIRST MAN BY DAMIEN CHAZELLE TO OPEN 75TH VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
http://www.labiennale.org/en/news/first-man-damien-chazelle-open-75th-venice-film-festival
The film stars Ryan Gosling, Jason Clarke and Claire Foy, and kicks off the Venezia 75 Competition.
MICHELE RIONDINO TO HOST THE OPENING AND CLOSING NIGHTS
http://www.labiennale.org/en/news/michele-riondino-host-opening-and-closing-nights
The 75th Venice Film Festival opens on 29 August and will come to an end on 8 September.
Actor Michele Riondino will host the opening and closing events of the 75th Venice International Film Festival 2018, directed by Alberto Barbera and organized by the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta.
Michele Riondino will open the 75th Venice Film Fest on the evening of Wednesday August 29th 2018, for the inauguration ceremony on the stage of the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido), and will lead the closing ceremony on September 8th, during which the Lions and other official prizes of the 75th Venice Film Festival will be announced.
PALAZZO DEL CINEMA
http://www.labiennale.org/en/venues/palazzo-del-cinema
The Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido di Venezia is the main headquarters for the Venice International Film Festival. Built in record time in the Modernist style of the time, it was inaugurated on August 10th 1937 for the fifth edition of the Festival. Compared to the rhetorical monumentality of the nearby Casinò, the Palazzo del Cinema, which features a Hall and a 1000-seat screening room, is a synthesis of Rationalist models. What remains of the original building are the two rounded sides and the lateral façades.
http://www.labiennale.org/en/venues/palazzo-del-cinema
The historic Sala Grande – where the main screenings and awards ceremonies of the Festival take place – underwent a series of transformations first in the 1950s, then in 1995, and the final phase in 2011, which entailed a radical restoration of the interiors which were equipped with the latest technology required to support the visual and sound standards of the screenings at the Venice Film Festival. The restyling of the Sala Grande was inspired by the formal elements of the 1937 building, reinterpreted in a contemporary key, including wood paneling along the walls and new seats, increased in number from 1019 to 1032, with the seating inspired by Luigi Quagliata's original design, upholstered in a custom-designed fabric. Great attention was paid to the lighting and especially to improving the acoustics of the Sala, the trapezoid form of which was designed to optimize the acoustics of the sound systems in use at that time, but was inadequate to meet the needs of today's sound systems.
Today's Sala Darsena, once known as the Pala Galileo, was built on the base of the open-air Arena constructed during the expansion in the 1950s adjacent to the Palazzo del Cinema. When it was built, it provided seating for over 1500 people for the evening screenings of the Venice Film Festival. The laminated wood roof was built in less than 3 months in 1999, to a project by architect Enrico Valeriani, and was intended to be a temporary solution before a more radical renovation could begin. In 2014, the Sala Darsena was significantly renovated by the Biennale with the purpose of turning it into a screening room equal to the Sala Grande. The interiors and technology were updated and a foyer was built to receive the public.
The walls of the Sala were redesigned with technical screens in a variety of different shapes, made out of a highly sound-absorbing fabric to guarantee the finest acoustic performance. The existing stepped seating area was expanded to fit new seats sized to provide spectator comfort and to increase the capacity to 1409. The latest screening and audio technology was introduced and the new projection room provided spaces for directing, audio control and simultaneous translation facilities. An entrance Foyer was built on the side towards the Casinò with a wood and glass structure, and a new entrance system was developed with stairs, ramps and green areas integrated into the surrounding urban space.
SALA ZORZI 48 seats
SALA PASINETTI 119 seats