To generate much-needed funds for the American Foundation for AIDS Research
(amfAR), Venice is site of another festival Gala this evening. Lauren Bacall
will serve as the Event Chair for the BVLGARI-sponsored Cinema Against AIDS
event, hosted by Milla Jovovich and featuring a special performance by Dame
Shirley Bassey.
The black-tie gala will take place at the Arsenale and will be co-chaired by
Paolo Bulgari, Lady Helen Taylor, Moritz de Hadeln, Francesca Bortolotto Possati,...
The 69th edition of MIFED is set to run from November 3 – 7 in Milano,
with pre-screenings Saturday November 2nd. Just two months before the event,
a 10 % increase in space (from more than 7,000 sq meters last year up to 8,500
for 2002) as well as increases in the number of visitors and screenings are
all contributing to the happy faces of Mr. Zola, President of MIFED, and Andrea
Vaiani, Operations Manager, who hosted a press conference and luncheon in the
Excelsior...
Tom Ripley is all grown up. He has all the money, power and status he so desired
when younger and can satisfy every whim. He delights in surrounding himself
with beauty and appreciates the finest art, music, architecture, food and wine
in the world. But you must never forget for a minute that he is ready to defend
all this hard-won privilege. To the death. Thus sets the tone for Liliani Cavani’s
Ripley’s Game screening out of competition and starring John Malkovic...
FBI profiler Terry McCalebis now retired on his boat in the San Pedro harbor. Two years previously, he'd been felled by a heart attack while chasing a serial murderer dubbed "The Code Killer". McCaleb now lives with the transplanted heart of a murder victim. When her sister Graciella (Wanda de Jesus) begs him to investigate, McCaleb feels an obligation and is soon sucked back into a full tilt investigation. Special Screening at Venice Festival. ...
Sophia Loren was back in Venice after 20 years of absence and the Festival was hailing their legendary actress including Italy's Film Journalist Guild Piero Bianchi Award....
The stars keep arriving and posing for the media and fans in front of the Palazzo on the Lido, from the opening film stars of Frida - Salma Hayek, Valeria Golino and Alfred Molina, Gwyneth Paltrow to Sophia Loren and son Edoardo Ponti as well as the jury president Gong Li and other jury members....
Premiered in the Upstream section at Venice 2002, Lukas Moodysson is presenting his latest, Lilja 4-ever, about a sixteen year-old in a poor and far-off suburb in the former Soviet Union. The director claims that God whispered in his ear to make the film about the sex slave market in Sweden where in his hometown of Malmö young girls are raped in the streets. He feels it is his responsibility to change the world on the subject and at the least the power of the film seems fully capable of destroy...
Tilda Swinton arrived in Venice for the New Territory screening of Tilda Swinton - The Love Factory, Luca Guadagnino's short film (33 min) which paints the portrait of his friend Tilda Swinton. ...
The opening gala of the San Sebastian International Film Festival, to take
place on 19 September 2002, will serve as the setting for the presentation of
Fipresci's Fourth Grand Prix for Best Film of the Year and First Grand Prix
for New Director of the Year.
In 1999, the Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival and Fipresci
(International Film Critics' Federation) decided to create a joint award aimed
at promoting and encouraging venturesome, original and personal ...
The consummate actress, a unique blend of talent, beauty, intelligence and feminine
charm has come to the Venice Film Festival to present her latest film Nearest
to Heaven. Although this film directed by fellow Frenchwoman, Tonie Marshall
did not encounter great critical acclaim, there is no doubt that Deneuve is
Marshall's muse. The director, whom audiences best remember for wonderful little
films like Sciampiste & Co. and Tontaine et Tonton said that
not only did sh...
“MOBILE PHONES AND INTERNET: WILL THEY HELP BOOST CINEMA AUDIENCES?”
MEDIA Salles’ workshop at the Venice Film Festival 2002.
Thursday 5 September, from 3 pm to 4:30 pm, sala PASINETTI.
MEDIA Salles, the project operating in the framework of the European Union’s
MEDIA Plus Programme, with the support of the Italian Government, has organised
during the Venice Film Festival a workshop on the use of the new technologies
to promote cinema-going.
During this ...
The American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) is having a fund raising
event, Cinema Against Aids Venice, on Wednesday September 4, 2002 at the Arsenale
of Venice. The evening’s black-tie gala is sponsored by Bulgari, and will
be chaired by Lauren Bacall and hosted by Milla Jovovich. There will also be
a special performance by Dame Shirley Bassey.
SPECIAL EVENTS
Wednesday September 4, 2002
Sala Perla, 12:30 pm
McCann&Erickson present the short film Don Chisciot...
Although the festival thinned out with certain festival-goers heading to Toronto
for the start of its 27th edition, business stepped up. The Upstream selection
Ken Park from Larry Clark and Ed Lachmann was bought up - before its
official screening tomorrow - by Norway's Oro Film for all Scandinavian rights,
Video Vision bought it for South Africa, Eco Filmes for Portugal, Audiovisual
for Greece and Mongkol for Thailand, reported Screen Daily Online.
Set in Visalia, Californ...
Today's competition features are the German entry from director Doris Dorrie,
Nackt (Naked), and L'homme du train by French director Patrice
Leconte. The Critics' Week entry is Mon Huan Bu Luo by Wen-tang Cheng
and the Upstream selections are Xun Qiang (The Missing Gun) by Lu Chuan
and Musik for bryllup og begravelse (Music for weddings and funerals)
by Unni Straume, the first Norwegian film to come to the festival for more than
15 years.
The out of competition Sepcial ...
Selecting a film about the life of Frida Kahlo was regarded by some as a 'revolutionary' subject that ironically poked fun at director Moritz de Hadeln's declaration that politics would not be the main course of the 59th Mostra. The town was buzzing with news of Frida, a colorful extravaganza, not exactly art house, nor a smooth commercial production....
Additional screening - New Territories/Affetti Collaterali (Side Effects
or Side Affections)
Taking place tomorrow, Tuesday 3 September, at 12.30 pm in the Sala Volpi are
the screenings of the films Thirst for Revenge by Mehmet Özcelick,
Goldfish Game by Jan Lauwers and Otello Atto V Scena II by Francesco
Siciliano. The films are a part of Affetti Collaterali (Side Effects or Side
Affections) in the section New Territories and were initially planned to be
screen...
After four full days of festival, the buzz begins to form around the films.
The Italian dailies TV Film and Ciak both feature a critics page with their
ratings. Of course this is very early on, but Peter Mullan's The Magdalene
Sisters is heading the pack of competition favorites - amongst the foreign
critics as well - or at least was up to today, which added two titles to the
list: House of Fools from Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky and Far
From Heavenfrom Todd Hayne...
Back at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, Peter Mullan confessed his intentions
to make a film about women as victims of social oppression. He also feared that
it would cause quite a controversy and perhaps get banned. So far this film
entitled The Magdalene Sisters has made a very strong impression among
the films in the Venice official competition. Mullan's portrayal of young female
interns in Irish catholic asylums is indeed very heatedly controversial, yet
this cannot hi...
The Culture Business and FilmFestivals Entertainment Group today announced
their new partnership aimed at better serving the Italian Festival Community.
The partnership brings to life a series of news services jointly designed to
the specific Italian festivals. This will promote the increasing awareness of
Italian Festivals on the International scene. Togheter, they will offer a variety
of tools to improve the efficiency of the organisation, communication, sponsor
sourcing, ...
Giuliano Montaldo, the president of Rai Cinema and Marco Muller, the former
head of production at Fabrica, and now the head of a new company called Downtown
Pictures, announced the signing of a co-production deal in Venice. The aim is
to make films from countries whose cultural heritage and stories have not been
explored by mainstream filmmakers and the first projects in the pipeline are
Fango (Mud), Darvish Zaim's latest film about the Greek and Turkish Cypriot
conflict ...
The press conference for Lukas Moodysson's Lilja 4-ever was one of the
mildest revelations at the Festival so far. First of all, and understandibly
so, no questions about the sensitive nature of the film nor its politics was
to be asked of the two young actors Oksana Akinshina (Lilja) and Artiom Bogucharskij
(Volodja). But could that have been why Moodysson was also not going to answer
anything?
When asked if he was a Catholic because of his guardian angel iconography...
Useful information for your daily rounds: special events, press conferences,
Venice Screenings program and the festival film schedule
SPECIAL EVENTS
Sunday, September 1, 2002
Grande Sala, 18:15 pm
Alessandro Gassman and Monica Bellucci will present veteran Italian film director
Dino Risi with this year’s Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion. This is an important
date in Gassman Jr.’s calendar because it would have been the 80th birthday
of his father Vittorio, the s...
Today is Dino Risi day, starting with the 11:45 am screening of the new print
of The Easy Life (Il sorpasso, 1962) starring Vittorio Gassman
and Jean-Louis Trintignant. At 2:30 pm, a press conference in the Casino will
allow the press to drill this veteran Italian writer/director who has made some
80 films, almost one for every year of his life, now 86.
Alessandro Gassman and Monica Bellucci will present Mr. Risi with this year's
Lifetime Achievement Golden Lion in a ...
In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviets, afraid of attacks by U.S. Polaris missile subs, rushed their own nuclear missile sub into service. Never mind that it was full of leaks, had no back-up systems, had bad wiring, etc. We're told that ten men died before the ship was ever launched! When Captain Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson) tells brass that his sub isn't ready for a sea trial and mock missile launch, brass deposes him with more politically correct skipper Alexei Vostrikov (Harris...
Sophia Loren's career has always been a family thing. As a kid, her mother enrolled
her on beauty pageants before taking her at age 15 to Cinecitta, where they
both appeared in Mervyn Le Roy's Quo Vadis. In 1957, Sophia Loren married
producer Carlo Ponti, who some claimed was the "father figure she never experienced
as a child". It is now up to the new generation to take the family names further
into movie territory with Between Strangers, in which Edoardo Ponti cast
his ...
Chatelin Bruno 
