Venice International Film Festival 2006
The 63rd Venice International Film Festival (63rd Mostra internazionale d'arte cinematografica) took place from August 30th to September 9th, 2006 . The film festival , one of the most important film festivals alongside the Cannes International Film Festival and the Berlinale , has been held annually in Venice since 1932 in August and September . In 2006 the film festival opened with Brian De Palma's crime film The Black Dahlia . In addition to this film, twenty more and one previously announced “surprise film” took part in the competition for the Golden Lion , the festival's most important prize. In the three main sections - the main competition, the Orizzonti section and the Corta Cortissimo short film competition - 62 films from 27 countries, selected from over 2,500 entries, were shown. Films from Chad , Cyprus and Indonesia were shown for the first time at the Venice Film Festival . A total of 2,589 films were shown at the eleven-day event, including 1,429 feature films.
The Golden Lion finally went to the Chinese Jia Zhangke for his film Still Life . Only the winner of the Golden Lion as an honorary prize for a life's work had already been determined in advance; the American director and screenwriter David Lynch , who is known among other things for Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive - Street of Darkness , received the award.
competition
jury
The president of the competition jury in 2006 was the French actress Catherine Deneuve , who was awarded the Coppa Volpi for best actress in 1998 for her performance in the crime drama Place Vendôme at the Biennale, as the Venice Film Festival is often called .
Deneuve was assisted by the Italian actor and director Michele Placido , who received the FEDIC Prize in 1998 and was represented in the competition with two other directorial works in 2002 and 2004. The Spanish director and screenwriter Bigas Luna , who has already won two awards in Venice , was part of the jury , as was the Portuguese producer of Until the End of the World , Paulo Branco , among others . The American director, screenwriter and producer Cameron Crowe , the Russian actress Tschulpan Nailjewna Khamatova and the South Korean director and screenwriter Park Chan-wook completed the jury.
Movies
For the first time since 1945, all films shown in the competition premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Festival director Marco Müller originally wanted Tom Tykwer's 50 million literary film adaptation Parfum - The Story of a Murderer as the opening film for the Festival am Lido , but the German production company Constantin-Film refused.
The only German-language film in the competition this year was Fallen by the Austrian Barbara Albert , whose film Nordrand had already screened in the 1999 film festival competition and for which Nina Proll had received the Marcello Mastroianni Prize as best young actress. Fallen , which deals with the re-encounter of five women after fourteen years, is the first Austrian competition entry in Venice since Ulrich Seidl's Dog Days 2001. Daratt by Chader Mahamat-Saleh Haroun , the only African film in the competition, was co-produced by Austria. As in the previous year, films produced exclusively by Germany were not in the competition. The Black Dahlia by the American Brian De Palma with Josh Hartnett , Aaron Eckhart and Scarlett Johansson in the lead roles and the World War II thriller Black Book by the Dutchman Paul Verhoeven were co-produced by Germany.
The United States was represented with five films. Darren Aronofsky celebrated the premiere of his first film in six years with his science fiction drama The Fountain with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz in the leading roles. With his first two feature films, Pi and Requiem for a Dream, he had great successes at film festivals and at film awards. In addition to the aforementioned The Black Dahlia and The Fountain , Allen Coulter's The Hollywood Conspiracy with Adrien Brody and Diane Lane and Emilio Estevez 's film adaptation of the background to the murder of Robert F. Kennedy , Bobby , with Anthony Hopkins and Demi Moore on the Golden Lion to hope. Alfonso Cuarón , who had already competed in 2001 with Y Tu Mamá También - Lust for Life and won the script award for it, presented his science fiction thriller Children of Men with Clive Owen and Julianne Moore in Venice . Stephen Frears ' portrait of Elizabeth II, starring Helen Mirren and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair , was launched under the title The Queen . The Frenchman Benoît Jacquot , who had already competed twice with films in the film festival, was there in 2006 with his work L'intouchable .
The anime director Katsuhiro Otomo presented Mushishi , a film adaptation of the manga series of the same name by Yuki Urushibara , his second real film after World Apartment Horror from 1991. The only animated film in the competition was Paprika by the Japanese Satoshi Kon , who was supported by films like Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers had received widespread critical acclaim. Other East Asian representatives in the competition were Jia Zhangkes Still Life , Johnnie Tos Fong juk , Apichatpong Weerasethakuls Sang sattawat and Tsai Ming-Liangs Hei yanquan . The participation of Still Life was only announced during the festival as a "surprise film".
Award winners
The Chinese Jia Zhangke was able to compete against the 21 other films for the Golden Lion for best film with the realistically filmed drama Still Life , which critically deals with the effects of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze . The jury's decision was a surprise, as the majority of the press expected one of the English-language films to be the winner of the Golden Lion and Still Life was nominated at the last minute as a “surprise film”. Zhangke had already been represented twice in the biennial competition.
Alain Resnais won the Silver Lion for best director for his theater film Herz , the special prize was awarded by the jury of the political parable Daratt by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun . The Acting Awards , the Coppa Volpi , went to Ben Affleck for The Hollywood Conspiracy and Helen Mirren for The Queen . Peter Morgan also received the Screenplay Award for The Queen . Isild Le Besco won the festival's young actor prize, the Marcello Mastroianni Prize , for L'intouchable . The jury awarded Emanuele Crialese a Silver Lion as the best new discovery for Golden Door . Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki was recognized for best technology contribution for his work on Children of Men .
The pair of directors Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet was awarded a special lion for the “renewal of the language of cinema”. The 73-year-old Straub did not appear at the festival because he did not want to go to an event where so many public and private police are looking for terrorists.
Orizzonti
In the Orizzonti (Eng. "Horizons") section, which is dedicated to the new paths of cinema, the film Akamas by the Greek-Cypriot documentary filmmaker Panicos Chrysanthou was shown. However, the government of Cyprus did not want the film, which shows the political history of the country from the 1950s to 1975, to be shown and wanted Chrysanthou to withdraw the film. In the same section, the German director Edgar Reitz showed the fourth part of his Heimat film series and Douglas McGrath showed his film adaptation of Truman Capote's life , Kaltes Blut - In the footsteps of Truman Capote , with Toby Jones and Sandra Bullock .
Among the 24 feature and documentary films that were shown in the section and which could raise hopes for the two prizes of the section, there was also, for example, The Hottest State by American actor Ethan Hawke , who is the film adaptation of his own novel presented, and Tachiguishi retsuden from Mamoru Oshii . The latter film is a mixture of cartoon, computer animation and real film. For example, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Shinji Aoyama also showed their new films in the Horizons section .
The jury in the section was headed by the German director Philip Gröning . Other members of the jury were the Italian director Carlo Carlei , the also Italian screenwriter Giuseppe Genna , the Japanese producer Keiko Kusakabe and the Egyptian director Yousri Nasrallah .
Liu Jie won the Orizzonti Prize, which was endowed with 10,000 euros in 2006, for Mabei shang de fating . The Orizzonti Doc Award went to Spike Lee for his four-hour documentary When the Levees Broke about Hurricane Katrina .
Corta Cortissimo
Seventeen short films, all under thirty minutes, from fifteen countries competed for the Corta-Cortissimo lion. President of the three-person jury in this section was the South African producer and director Teboho Mahlatsi , who was awarded the Silver Lion for best short film at the Lido in 1999 and a human rights award at the Venice Film Festival in 2004. Outside the competition, he showed his latest work, Sekalli sa Meokgo .
The Corta-Cortissimo-Löwe went to the 18-minute film Comment on freine dans une descente? the Frenchwoman Alix Delaporte . Among other things, she was able to prevail against two German participants, detectives from Andreas Goldstein and Rien ne va plus from Katja Pratschke and Gusztáv Hàmos . While the Malaysian Yeo Joon Han received a special mention for adults only , the British Daniel Elliott won the UIP award for the best European short film for The Making of Parts .
| Movie title | Director | Country of production | length |
| Adults only | Joon Han Yeo | Malaysia | 10 mins |
| To año mais longo | Marco Martins | Portugal | 29 minutes |
| Comment on freine dans une descente? | Alix Delaporte | France | 18 minutes |
| Detectives | Andreas Goldstein | Germany | 21 minutes |
| Eva reste au placard les nuits de pleine lune | Alex Stockman | Belgium | 29 minutes |
| "Faça sua Escolha" | Paula Miranda | Brazil | 7 minutes |
| Fib 1477 | Lorenzo Sportiello | Italy | 12 minutes |
| In the Eye Abides the Heart | Mary Sweeney | United States | 8 minutes |
| Levelek | Ferenc Cakó | Hungary | 6 minutes |
| The making of parts | Daniel Elliott | Great Britain | 15 minutes |
| Mum | Mads Matthiesen | Denmark | 12 minutes |
| Pharmacon | Ioakim Mylonas | Cyprus | 13 minutes |
| Rien ne va plus | Katja Pratschke and Gusztáv Hàmos | Germany | 30 minutes |
| Simanei Derech | Shimon Shai | Israel | 22 minutes |
| Treinta Años | Nicolàs Lasnibat | Chile , France | 21 minutes |
| Trilliza's propaganda | Fernando Salem | Argentina | 15 minutes |
| What Does Your Daddy Do? | Martin Stitt | Great Britain | 15 minutes |
Films out of competition
David Lynch's tenth feature film, the mystery drama Inland Empire with Laura Dern in the lead role, was shown in Venice, as was the anime film Die Chroniken von Erdsee by Goro Miyazaki , whose father Hayao Miyazaki was with him the previous year , which was released in Japanese cinemas in July 2006 the Golden Lion as an honorary award. Oliver Stone showed his drama World Trade Center about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA with Nicolas Cage and Michael Peña , which has been in US and Canadian cinemas since August 9th . David Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada , which has been in US cinemas since June and is about the head of a respected fashion magazine, played by Meryl Streep , was also shown outside of the competition .
After a number of older Italian films were shown as the Secret History of Italian Film in 2004 and a number of older Asian films as the Secret History of Asian Film in 2005 , this was continued in 2006 with a Secret History of Russian Film . Some newly discovered and restored films were shown. The Secret History of Italian Films found a second sequel.
Retrospectives during the festival were devoted to the Brazilian director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, three great Italian filmmakers, Roberto Rossellini , Mario Soldati and Luchino Visconti . In memory of Rossellini's centenary, his Rome, Open City from 1945 was shown in a restored version on August 29, before the actual festival began.
Competition with the Festa del Cinema internazionale di Roma
In October the Festa del Cinema internazionale di Roma should take place in Rome for the first time , a film festival that should be more popular and representative of the Italian state. Although there were plans to rebuild the Palazzo del Cinema in Venice , which was much criticized because of its age , there were fears that the state would rather support the new festival in Rome, which was decided under the government of Silvio Berlusconi , and which has a new building to offer where, for example, Steven Shainberg's Fur - An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus starring Nicole Kidman was performed in October .
See also
Web links
- Official website (English)
- Press review on film-zeit.de
- Compilation of the competition films and award winners in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jan Schulz-Olaja: Venice wanted “Parfum” , Der Tagesspiegel, August 25, 2006
- ↑ Die Lauen und die Leisen , the daily newspaper, September 10, 2006
- ↑ Niels Kadritzke: Blatant censorship, blatant disgrace , the daily newspaper 26 August, 2006.
- ↑ Peer Meinert: There's never been so much Hollywood , stern, August 28, 2006