Study Chinese - Venice film festival's 75th anniversary edition kicks off

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ENTERTAINMENT / Movies






Venice film festival's 75th anniversary edition kicks off


(AFP)
Updated: 2007-08-29 10:35





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Men work at the Casino at Venice Lido, a day before the opening of the
64th Venice International Film Festival. The Festival feature 61 films in
the 3 main sections which 55 world premieres and 6 international
premieres.[AFP]

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Creative tension will be in the air Wednesday as the 75th anniversary
edition of the Venice Film Festival kicks off with the psychological
drama "Atonement" by Britain's Joe Wright.

Based on the best-selling novel by Ian McEwan and starring Keira
Knightley, whom Wright also directed in "Pride and Prejudice," the film
also features Vanessa Redgrave, 70, who plays Knightley's character in
later years.

Also Wednesday, Ang Lee will unveil his greatly anticipated erotic spy
thriller "Se, Jie" (Lust, Caution), set in Shanghai in the 1940s.

Lee's "Brokeback Mountain" took the top prize in Venice in 2005.

This year's Mostra, which runs through September 8, has a bumper crop of
American and British selections, while also remaining true to its
tradition of showcasing Asian cinema.

Nine of the 22 films in the main competition are British or American,
including Kenneth Branagh's mystery thriller "Sleuth" with Michael Caine
and Jude Law, and Ken Loach's "It's a Free World."

Chinese director Jiang Wen will offer "Taiyang Zhaochang Shengqi" (The
Sun Also Rises), a quartet of stories that dovetail together in the end.
From Japan there is Miike Takashi's "Sukiyaki Western Django," a complex
tale of dirty tricks, betrayal, desire and love.

All 22 of the films in competition will be world premieres, a feat
achieved only once before -- last year.

Another 22 films will vie for prizes in the avant-garde Horizons and
Horizons Documentaries categories, while 13 will be screened out of
competition.

George Clooney stars in "Michael Clayton" by Tony Gilroy, while Brad Pitt
plays Jesse James in Andrew Dominik's "The Assassination of Jesse James
by the Coward Robert Ford."

Contemporary life and war are common threads to many of this year's
selections.

The war in Iraq inspired Brian De Palma's "Redacted," which portrays the
rape and murder of an Iraqi teenager by US soldiers, as well as Paul
Haggis' "In the Valley of Elah," in which a career military man played by
Tommy Lee Jones investigates the disappearance of his son, a soldier in
Iraq.

Co-starring with Jones are Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron.

The out-of-competition menu will offer Woody Allen's latest film
"Cassandra's Dream," a drama set in south London, "La Fille Coupee en
Deux" by French veteran Claude Chabrol and a new comedy by Japanese
director Takeshi Kitano, "Kantoku Banzai!" (Glory to the Filmmaker!).

Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who won Golden Lions for "The Story of Qiu
Ju" (1992) and "Not One Less" (1999), will head the jury of this year's
edition of the Mostra.

All but six of the 57 films will be world premieres, including an
unusually large number -- 15 -- of the 19 American selections.

Welsh director Peter Greenaway will offer "Nightwatching," which revolves
around Rembrandt's most famous work, while Quentin Tarantino stars in
Takashi Miike's Japanese-style western "Sukiyaki Western Django."

Tarantino will also host a retrospective of spaghetti westerns featuring
30 examples of the genre.

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