Venice film festival begins today

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

CHENNAI, AUG. 29. The Venice International Film Festival begins on Wednesday evening with a salute to the Hollywood veteran, Clint Eastwood. The actor, who has had strong ties with Italian cinema, will be given the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Sharon Stone will present the award. His latest feature, the 120- minute long Space Cowboys (with Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner and Donald Sutherland) will open the festival that takes place on the island of Lido, just off Venice, in the Adriatic Sea.

Space Cowboys is the story of four retired pilots, recalled by the NASA for a special mission following their exclusion from the space programme in the 1960s because of their non-conformist behaviour.

Eastwood - who has produced, directed and acted in the film - began his career in the mid-1950s. His roles in the spaghetti Westerners of the Italian director, Sergio Leone, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (all made in the 1960s) not only made him a celebrity, but associated him with the genre. This tie remains.

The Venetian recognition is seen by many as an attempt to make amends: Eastwood's earlier Unforgiven was turned down when it was offered for the festival's competition section. When the movie won international acclaim and Oscars, Venice's selectors were put to a lot of embarrassment.

An impressive line-up of competing works will be showcased in the festival that has retained its quiet charm. Among them are Robert Altman's Dr. T and the Women (with Richard Gere, Helen Hunt, Laura Dern and Liv Tyler), Sharunas Bartas' Freedom, Fruit Chan's Durian Durian, Stephen Frears' Liam, Clara Law's The Goddess of 1967, Jafar Panahi's The Circle, Manoel de Oliveira's Palavra e Utopia and Sally Potter's The Man who Cried.

Buddhadeb Dasgupta's Uttara (The Wrestlers) in Bengali will be the first Indian movie to compete at Venice in 12 years. Dasgupta, also a renowned poet and novelist, has woven a lyrical tale of how religious bigotry and intolerance mar the idyllic existence of a village. Understated and told with remarkable poignancy, Uttara is one of those rare Indian films that can make the country proud in the international arena. Judging Uttara and the others will be a jury, headed by Milos Forman. Actress, Jennifer Jason Leigh, director, Samira Makhmalbaf (from Iran, whose Blackboards ran to rave reviews at the recent Cannes Film Festival), director, Claude Chabrol, writer, Ben-Jelloun and German movie critic, Andreas Kilb are also part of the jury.

The Festival will close on September 9 with Tony Gatlif's Vengo, a Spanish-French production.

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Section  : Entertainment