Programme finalised for day one at Venice Film Festival

The programme has been finalised for the celebration of the 90^th anniversary of the Venice International Film Festival – the first edition of which was held from August 6^th through 21^st 1932 on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido – which La Biennale di Venezia is organizing on Saturday July 9^th 2022.

The international conference (Biennale-ASAC Library, Giardini)

The celebrations will open in the morning (10:30 am) with an international conference in the Library of the Historical Archives of La Biennale (ASAC) at the Giardini. The greetings by the President of La Biennale, Roberto Cicutto, will be followed by the presentation – with a conversation between the Director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera and the author – of the Italian edition of the new History of the Venice International Film Festival written by Prof. Gian Piero Brunetta, the product of the collaboration between La Biennale and the Marsilio publishing company.

The conference, divided into two sessions, one in the morning (through 1:30 pm) and one in the afternoon (3 pm to 6 pm), will feature the participation of historians, critics and teachers to reflect on the value of the historical and cultural experience of the Venice Film Festival, and will gather – from the voices of authoritative protagonists – personal accounts, memories and emotions from the glorious adventure of the oldest film festival in the world.

The participants will include (in person or connected by video):

• Natalia Aspesi (Ita, journalist)
• Paolo Baratta (Ita, former President of La Biennale)
• Marco Bellocchio (Ita, director)
• Gian Piero Brunetta (Ita, film historian)
• Gianni Canova (Ita, critic and professor)
• Marina Cicogna (Ita, producer)
• Michel Ciment (Fra, critic)
• Giovanni De Luna (Ita, historian)
• Isabella Ferrari (Ita, actress)
• Valeria Golino (Ita, actress)
• Isabelle Huppert (Fra, actress)
• Alessandra Levantesi Kezich (Ita, critic)
• Paolo Mereghetti (Ita, critic)
• Carlo Montanaro (Ita, film historian
• Maria Francesca Piredda (Ita, researcher Università Cattolica di Milano)
• Jeff Sharp (Usa, producer and Executive Director of the Gotham Film & Media Institute)
• Tilda Swinton (Gb, actress)
• Margarethe Von Trotta (Ger, director)

Also attending in person:

• Manitta Camerini, daughter of the director Mario Camerini
• Peter Cowie, film historian
• Luca De Michelis, CEO of Marsilio Editori
• Felice Laudadio, former Artistic Director of the Cinema Department of La Biennale di Venezia, film critic

Screening of two masterpieces from the first Venice Film Festival in 1932 (Sala Grande, Lido)

The celebrations will continue with the screening in the evening (9 pm) in the historical Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido, of two masterpieces in the line-up of the first edition of the Venice Film Festival in 1932:

• Regen (Rain) by Mannus Franken and Joris Ivens (Holland, 1929, 12’, copy from the EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam)
• Gli uomini, che mascalzoni… (What Scoundrels Men Are!) by Mario Camerini (Italy, 1932, 66’, copy from the Cineteca Nazionale, Roma)

Exhibition about the first Venice Film Festival in 1932  (Ca’ Giustinian, Venice)

At Ca’ Giustinian (La Biennale headquarters) in Venice, an exhibition dedicated to the first edition of the Venice Film Festival in 1932 will open to the public (inauguration date Friday July 8^th). Based on materials from the Historical Archives of the Contemporary Arts (ASAC) of La Biennale, it will feature previously unreleased documents, photographs, posters, articles from the past, playbills, film clips.