Non-fiction

Monograph

• July 2022

The Venice International Film Festival 1931-2022

Author: Gian Piero Brunetta

Publisher: Marsilio

Translation languages: ita > en

Translators: Jeremy Carden, Michael Carlos, Sarah Elizabeth Cree per NTL – Il Nuovo Traduttore Letterario

This fascinating journey through the history of the Venice Film Festival, featuring directors, films, filmmakers and actors, focuses on the relationship between cinema, culture and society.

This complex volume is a wealth of information, references and perspectives on our day and age, a scintillating overview by one of Italy’s most distinguished film historians and critics.

The book was published in an Italian and English edition to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Venice Film Festival (inaugurated in 1932 as the Esposizione Internazionale di Arte Cinematografica). The translation, commissioned by the Venice Biennale Foundation in collaboration with the Marsilio publishing house, was an arduous undertaking due to both the density of the text and the limited time allotted for the translation.

Useful links

Towards the Festival’s 90th Birthday — Prologue

One of the merits of the 77th Venice International Film Festival in September 2020, the year in which the Covid-19 pandemic struck, was to transmit a strong signal of optimism and hope about the cinema today and in the future, and about its ability to bring together viewers from around the world. Joining artistic director Alberto Barbera on stage during the inaugural event of this historic edition were the directors of the eight leading European film festivals. They were there to affirm their love of cinema, gratitude towards the Festival and a sense of belonging to a single family tree of which Venice is the founder.

Running in the same period (from 29 August to 8 December) at the Central Pavilion of the Giardini della Biennale was the exhibition Le muse inquiete, organised by the Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee (ASAC) and jointly curated by the directors of the Biennale’s various sections. This was the first attempt in the history of the event to combine all the sectors in a shared project and to affirm the centrality of the Archives in the life of the institution and in the future developments of its permanent activities.

The 2020 edition, due to the spirit that informed it, the quality of the selection and the programme laid on in the prevailing circumstances, is destined to be a milestone in the history of the Festival, acting both as a point of arrival and as a symbolic and material departure towards new horizons.

[traduzione di Jeremy Carden]