The 64th Venice Film Festival

　　Founded on August 6, 1932, at the Lido di Venezia, the oldest film festival in the world celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. It's directed by Marco Müller and organized by the Biennale di Venezia.

　　The Chinese director, Zhang Yimou has been invited to chair the film festival this year. Two leading figures from American cinema, producer Bill Mechanic and director Gregg Araki, have been selected as presidents of two of the international juries of the 64th Venice Film Festival, respectively for the Luigi De Laurentiis Prize for a First Film, and for the Orizzonti section dedicated to the new film-making trends. Mechanic and Araki are two of the most representative figures of the new US film scene, where independent spirit and creative originality contribute to give a renewed impulse to the production system.

　　Like the two preceding editions, the Jubilee Festival will also have a lean structure to assure maximum visibility to the films and film-makers: the number of feature films in the Official Selection will be kept to a total of less than 60 titles. The maximum numbers for each section shall be: 20 films for the Competition; eight films for the Out of Competition Section, five films for the Out of Competition/Midnight Section and 18 films for Orizzonti.

　　This year again, there will also be some Special Events. Among these, the special "Tim Burton Day" on September 5 to present the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to the American film director in the Palazzo del Cinema's Sala Grande.

　　The festival celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. 1932 saw the birth not only of the Festival but also of one of the protagonists of modern cinema: Alexander Kluge, father of Young German Cinema (initiator of the Oberhausen Manifesto) and winner of two Golden Lions and one Silver Lion. Kluge will provide an overview of the last 75 years of the history of cinema with a special program presented within the framework of the Venice Film Festival. The German director will present materials and documents, for the most part not made public before and some even made for the occasion. Among the main features of this program will be the Ein-Minuten-Filme, mini-films lasting just 60 seconds that Kluge has realized over the past 40 years, above all for the German ZDF and Swedish SVT television.