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VENICE 2006 Venice Days

Cinema in search of a (legal) identity

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Identity is the key word of the third edition of Venice Days at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival. The section, organised by critic Fabio Ferzetti, this year offers a programme centred on three cardinal themes: the new Italian film law, the European Charter for new technologies and the protection of filmmakers’ rights, and the valorisation of the Italian film tradition.

Italian cinema of yesterday and tomorrow, and its protection, valorisation and diffusion as a precious catalyst of identity, will be the subject of a seminar promoted by API. This seminar aims to present concrete offers for the much anticipated new film law (upon which all Italian film and television directors agree, for the first time ever) that is seeking new economic resources, the creation of a National Film Centre (based on the French model), to ensure European cinema the visibility necessary to its survival, and to finally give life to a viable Italian market.

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Cinema of the past has also roused interest at the Venice Days, whose organisers have taken on the ambitious task of bringing back to light those Italian films rendered invisible by legal restraints and the tyrannies of producers and distributors.

“Recouping the memory of cinema is fundamentally important to all of Italy, not only the critics,” said Ferzetti. “Our films, especially those made after WWII and in the 1950s, must become part of our educational system, like literature, and once again belong to everyone”. Yet the loss and subsequent search for a personal identity is also the fil rouge that unites the 12 selected films, seven of which are world premieres, six debut films and two second films.

With the exception of Chicha tu madre, a Peruvian/Argentinean co-production by Gianfranco Quattrini, the remaining 11 films are European production or co-productions. Physical and interior nomadism thus unite the sparkling Moroccan/French comedy WWW, What a Wonderful World by Faouzi Bensaïdi and the “contemporary infernos” of the co-production between Burkina Faso, Canada and France by Laurent Salgues, Rêves de Poussière; the Scandinavian films Offscreen by Denmark’s Christoffer Boe (who was at the 2005 Venice Days with Allegro) and the innovative debut film by Swedish director Jesper Ganslandt, Falkenberg farewell; Spanish titles Azul oscuro casi negro by Daniel Sanchez Arevalo, an entertaining Almodovor-esque melò and La noche de los girasoles (Angostro), a noir by Jorge Sanchez Cabezudo.

Other titles include Minetras tanto, an Argentinean/French co-production by Diego Lerman, made thanks to support from the Cinefondation of Cannes, French film Sept ans by Jean-Pascal Hattu, Come l’ombra by Italy’s Marina Spada, which features the great urban photographer Gabriele Basilico, and Khadak, a fiction film by documentary filmmakers Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth.
Venice Days will furthermore hold a special homage to Christophe de Ponfilly, with the screening of the French reporter-documentarian’s first (and only) feature film: L’etoile du soldat, a studied, poetic story about a Russian soldier “adopted” by Afghani soldiers.

The surprises do not end there, however: the selection will feature still more titles, as well as a parallel section of documentary films that is currently being developed.

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(Translated from Italian)

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