The selection has been made for the members of the International Jury for the Competition at the 69th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September 2012), with American director Michael Mann as president.

The decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Venice Biennale chaired by Paolo Baratta, upon the recommendation of the Director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera.

The personalities selected to compose the Jury are:

 

On the closing night of the Venice International Film Festival (September 8, 2012), the Venezia 69 International Jury will award the official prizes to the feature-length films in competition: the Golden Lion for Best Film, the Silver Lion for Best Director, the Special Jury Prize, the Coppa Volpi for Best Actor, the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress, the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young Actor or Actress, the Award for Best Technical Contribution and the Award for Best Screenplay.

Marina Abramovic, born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, is without question one of the seminal artists of our time. Since the beginning of her career in Yugoslavia during the early 1970s where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Abramovic has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has always been both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. Abramovic's concern is with creating works that ritualize the simple actions of everyday life like lying, sitting, dreaming, and thinking; in effect the manifestation of a unique mental state. As a vital member of the generation of pioneering performance artists that includes Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, and Chris Burden, Abramovic created some of the most historic early performance pieces and is the only one still making important durational works.

From 1975 until 1988, Abramovic and the German artist Ulay performed together, dealing with relations of duality. After separating in 1988, Abramovic returned to solo performances in 1989. Abramovic has presented her work with performances, sound, photography, video, sculpture, and ‘Transitory Objects for Human and Non Human Use’ in solo exhibitions at major institutions in the U.S. and Europe, including the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (1985), Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre George Pompidou, Paris (1990), Neue National Galerie, Berlin (1993), and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1995). Her work has also been included in many large-scale international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1976 and 1997) and Documenta VI, VII and IX, Kassel, Germany (1977, 1982 and 1992). In 1995, Abramovic’s exhibition Objects Performance Video Sound traveled to the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. In 1998, the exhibition Artist Body - Public Body toured extensively including stops at Kunstmuseum and Grosse Halle, Bern and La Gallera, Valencia. In 2000, a large solo show was held at the Kunstverein in Hannover. In 2002, she participated in the Berlin-Moscow exhibition, which opened at the Martin Gropius-Bauhaus in Berlin and finished its tour in 2004 at the State Historical Museum, Moscow. In 2004, Abramovic also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York and had a significant solo show, The Star, at The Marugame Museum of Contemporary Art and the Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan.

Marina Abramovic has taught and lectured extensively in Europe and America including the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Hamburg, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1994 she became Professor for Performance Art at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Braunschweig where she taught for seven years. In 2004 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Art Institute in Chicago.

She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale for her extraordinary video installation/performance piece Balkan Baroque‚ and in 2003 received the Bessie for The House with the Ocean View‚ a 12-day performance at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York.

In 2005, Abramovic presented Balkan Erotic Epic at the Pirelli Foundation in Milan, Italy and at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. That same year, she held a series of performances called Seven Easy Pieces at The Guggenheim Museum in New York, which was awarded the prize for 2005-2006 Best Exhibition of Time-Based Art by the United States Art Critics Association.

In 2008 she was honored with the Austrian Commander Cross for her contributions to Art History and in September 2009 decorated with the Honorary Doctorate of Arts by the University of Plymouth, UK. In the spring of 2010, she had her first major retrospective in the United States at The Museum of Modern Art- New York, and simultaneously performed her durational piece The Artist is Present for more than 700 hours.

In summer of 2011, Abramovic was bestowed with the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts by the Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 2011 a theatre piece by Robert Wilson entitled 'The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic' premiered and Abramovic retrospective The Artist is Present toured with great success to The Garage, in Moscow.

In January and February 2012 the HBO documentary, similarly entitled, premiered at Sundance Film Festival in Utah and The Canadian Film Premiere, Reel Artists Film Festival, Toronto. Abramovic has already had major shows at PAC and Lia Rumma Galeria, Milan. The artist is performing in Robert Wilson's theatre piece as it travels from Madrid in April to Basel, Amsterdam and Antwerp in June. Other major exhibitions during 2012 include The Abramovic Method at TBA-21 in Vienna, as well as solo shows at La Fabrica Gallery, Madrid and Galleri Brandstrup, Oslo.

 

Peter Ho-Sun Chan (director and producer, Hong Kong)

One of the predominant Chinese filmmakers, Peter Ho-Sun Chan has established himself firmly as a distinguished director/producer early in his career. Born to Thai-Chinese parents in Hong Kong, Chan returned to Thailand with his family at the age of 11, and later pursued studies in the United States. In the summer of 1983, he met with John Woo, who needed Thai translations for the film Heroes Shed No Tears, and from then on he began his career in the film industry.
Chan’s directorial debut, Alan and Eric: Between Hello and Goodbye (1991), became an instant hit and received the Best Actor award (Eric Tsang) for the Hong Kong Film Awards. In 1992, Chan co-founded the United Filmmakers Organization (UFO) and produced a solid track record of box office and critical hits such as Tom, Dick & Hairy (1993), He's a Woman, She's a Man (1994) and Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1997). He's a Woman, She's a Man, starring Leslie Cheung, received 11 nominations for the Hong Kong Film Awards and made Anita Yuen into a star, who also won the Best Actress for the film. Comrades, Almost a Love Story also received 11 nominations for the Hong Kong Film Awards and won 9 awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Maggie Cheung), Best Supporting Actor (Eric Tsang) and Best Screenplay. The film was named one of the 10 Best Movies of 1997 by US Time Magazine.
In 1998, Chan directed his first Hollywood picture The Love Letter for Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks SKG. In the same year, Chan was voted one of the top 10 directors to watch by the influential US trade magazine Variety, in conjunction with Sundance Film Festival.
In 2000, Chan established Applause Pictures, dedicated to pool together talent and investment from different Asian countries to produce quality co-productions targeting the "Pan-Asian" market. Films produced under the Applause Pictures banner include Jan Dara (2001), One Fine Spring Day (2001), The Eye series (2002, 2004, 2005), Three (2002) and Three...Extremes (2004), Golden Chicken (2002) and Golden Chicken 2 (2003), and McDull, The Alumni (2006). They were also warmly welcomed in the international market. For instance, The Eye was released in over 200 screens in Italy, which happened to be the biggest Chinese film release at the time. It was remade into a Hollywood movie of the same title, starring Jessica Alba.
In 2005, Chan decided that it was the right time to take on the China market. His first attempt was Perhaps Love (2005), a groundbreaking musical shot entirely on location in Mainland China. It became one of the year's top-grossing films in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and received a record 29 awards, including Best Director, at the Golden Horse Awards. It was also invited as the closing film for the 62nd Venice International Film Festival and selected as Hong Kong’s entry to the 78th Annual Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Chan next directed the war epic The Warlords (2007) with Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro, and produced Derek Yee's Protégé (2007). The two films were the two highest grossing Chinese films of 2007 both in Hong Kong and China. The Warlords grossed a staggering RMB 210 million (US$ 33 million) in China, and garnered 8 Hong Kong Film Awards and 4 Golden Horse Awards, including Best Director and Best Feature Film.
In 2009, Chan further sets his sights on the future developments of the China film market, with a mandate to cultivate a new generation of talent and to transform the face of Chinese-language cinema with original works that will reach previously untapped audience. He produced Teddy Chen's Bodyguards and Assassins (2009), an event blockbuster released in December 2009 to huge critical and commercial success, with box office passing the RMB 300 million (US$ 47 million) benchmark in China. It also scored 8 major trophies in the Hong Kong Film Awards alone, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Nicholas Tse) and Best Cinematography.
Chan’s next producing-directing effort, the martial arts epic Wu Xia (2001), was the only Chinese-language film to be invited into the Official Selection in the 64th Cannes Film Festival. It scored 8 trophies in 3 major film awards, including 2 Best Art Direction, 2 Best Cinematography, 2 Best Original Film Score and 1 Best Action Choreography.
Chan’s remarkable achievement in blending artistry and entertainment with business is well-supported by award-winning track records and box office figures. Films produced or directed by Chan have won 162 awards out of 262 nominations. In a survey among overseas film industry participants at the 2010 Hong Kong Filmart, organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Chan was voted “the most box-office bankable/sellable film director”. In 2012, the 36th Hong Kong International Film Festival selected Chan as the Filmmaker in Focus to celebrate his outstanding achievements in the film industry.
Chan’s upcoming slate consists of an array of films in different genres. It includes the action thriller The Guillotines, with Infernal Affairs director Andrew Lau and Chan as producer joining force for the first time to put a new spin on the legendary weapon; Aubrey Lam-directed romantic comedy The Truth of Beauty, about an ordinary girl who embarks on her incredible surgical journey towards beauty, true love and self-discovery; and Chan’s next directorial effort American Dreams in China, a sweeping tale spanning over 3 decades about friendship, loyalty and betrayal through the rise of a multi-billion dollar tutorial empire in China.
Aside from his filmmaking career, Chan also dedicates his time and energy in nurturing the future generation of film talents. Starting in 2008, Chan has participated as one of the University Artists in the University Artists Scheme launched by the University of Hong Kong. The scheme aims to develop students' critical, independent and innovative thinking. Since 2010, Chan has deepened his involvement by serving as an honorary consultant of the Academy of Film at the Hong Kong Baptist University. He is also serving as a member in the Panel of Examiners of the Hong Kong Film Development Council and advises the Fund Vetting Committee in evaluating applications for film production financing.

 

In the mid 1980s, after completing his military service, Ari Folman ventured out on his dream trip to circle the world with a backpack. Just two weeks and two countries into the trip, Ari realized traveling was not for him, so he settled into small guesthouses in Southeast Asia and wrote letters to his friends at home, letters in which he totally fabricated the perfect trip. One whole year of being in one place and writing down the fruits of his fantastical imagination convinced him to return home and study cinema.

His graduate film, Comfortably Numb (1991) documented Ari’s close friends taking cover on the verge of anxiety attacks during the first Gulf war while Iraqi missiles landed all over Tel Aviv. The result was comical and absurd and the film won the Israeli Academy award for Best Documentary. Between 1991-1996 Ari directed documentary specials for TV, mainly in the occupied territories. In 1996 he wrote and directed Saint Clara, a feature film based on a novel by Czech author Pavel Kohout. The film won seven Israeli Academy awards, including Best Director and Best Film. Saint Clara opened the Berlin Film Festival's Panorama and won the People’s Choice Award. The film was screened throughout America and Europe to critical acclaim. Ari continued directing successful documentary series and took time off for his second feature in 2001. Made in Israel is a futuristic fantasy that centers upon the pursuit of the world’s only remaining Nazi.

Ari Folman has written for several successful Israeli TV series, including the award-winning In Therapy (Be Tipul), which was the basis for the new HBO series In Treatment. Ari made his initial attempt at animation in his series The Material that Love is Made Of – each episode opens with five minutes of documentary animation which depicts scientists presenting their theories on the evolution of love. This successful attempt at documentary animation propelled Ari to develop the unique format of Waltz with Bashir. Based on a true story, the film is a quest into the director’s memory for the missing pieces from the days of the Lebanon War in the mid 80s. As far as Ari was concerned, it was only natural to transform the quest into animation, full of imagination and fantasy. Waltz with Bashir premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where it entered the competition for the Palme d'Or, and since then has won and been nominated for many additional important awards while receiving wide acclaim from critics. It won a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, an NSFC Award for Best Film, a César Award for Best Foreign Film and an IDA Award for Feature Documentary, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language and an Annie Award for Best Animated Feature.

Matteo Garrone was born in Rome in 1968. He graduated from the Art Lyceum in 1986 and worked as an assistant cameraman before focusing on painting. He won the Sacher Festival with the short film Silhouette in 1996. The following year he directed his first feature film Terra di Mezzo produced by his company Archimede, distributed by Tandem. It won the Turin International Festival of Young Cinema Jury Special Award and the Cipputi Award. He directed the documentary Oreste Pipolo - Wedding Photographer in Naples in 1998 and in the same year directed his second feature film Guests, which won the Kodak Award at the Venice Film Festival. Guests also won the Angers European First Film Festival European Jury Special Mention, the Valencia International Golden Moon of Valencia Best Film Award and the Kodak Award at the Messina Film Festival. He directed his third feature Roman Summer in 2000 and it was presented in the official selection at the Venice Film Festival. In 2002 he directed The Embalmer which won public and critical acclaim. It was presented in the Quinzane des Realisateurs at the 55th Cannes Film Festival and won David di Donatello Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor, the Silver Ribbon for Best Editing, the Golden Clapperboard for Best Editing, the Fellini Award for Best Producer, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Distribution. It also won the Pasolini Award Jury Special Prize. In 2004 his film First Love premiered in Competition at the 54th Berlin Film Festival and won the Silver Bear for Best Film Music as well as the Silver Ribbon at the David di Donatello Awards in the same category. Garrone directed Gomorra in 2008. The film won the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematographer, and Best Screenplay at the European Film Awards that year. It was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 2009 Golden Globe Awards; won the Silver Hugo for Best Screenplay at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2008, and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the BAFTA and César Awards in 2009. Garrone also produced Mid-August Lunch by Gianni Di Gregorio, which won the Best First Film Award at the Venice International Film Festival as well as many other international awards. In 2012 Garrone directed Reality which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

 

Widely acclaimed authorial film-maker Ursula Meier was born in Besançon, France, and is a French and Swiss citizen. From 1990 to 1994 she studied film-­making at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD) in Belgium, later working as assistant director on two films by Alain Tanner. At the same time, Ursula Meier began to pursue an independent career with Isaac’s Dream (Le Songe d’Isaac, 1994), the first of many short fiction films that garnered numerous prizes and awards at International film festivals. Two more shorts stand out - Sleepless (Des heures sans sommeil, 1998) and Table Manners (Tous à table, 2001), and they both won awards at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. After two documentaries, Around Pinget (Autour de Pinget, 2000) and Not the Cops, not the Blacks, not the Whites (Pas les flics, pas les noirs, pas les blancs, 2001), she directed Strong Shoulders (Des épaules solides, 2003), a film produced for ARTE’s “Masculin-Féminin/Petite Caméra” series, which was met with great acclaim. Home, her feature debut for the big screen, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival Critics' Week in 2008. This satiric comedy drama tells the story of a family who has pulled away from the world to try to maintain its model of family happiness. The feeling of isolation becomes more and more evident with the opening of the motorway, a metaphor for the outside world which arrives before their home and into their family life – a world which is noisy, dangerous, polluted, menacing. Home garnered numerous prizes worldwide, and also the Swiss Film Prize «Quartz 2009», for Best Fiction Film, Best Screenplay and Best Emerging Actor. This latter distinction went to Kacey Mottet Klein for his first appearance on screen. He later played the young Simon in Meier's film Sister (L’enfant d’en haut, 2012). With this second feature film, Meier once again returned to focus on those who exist on the margins of society, confirming her ability to build her narration on conflicting spaces, on the boundaries that her characters cross or are crossed by, on the escape lines either granted or denied to them. If in Home the boundary is as horizontal as the motorway that encompasses and exacerbates the latent conflicts in a family living on its fringes, in Sister it becomes vertical and social, following the  verticality of the cable car that divides the bright lights of a smart ski resort in the Swiss Valais from the grim industrial  wasteland of the valley floor below. Sister received a Silver Bear Special Award at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival.

 

Born in Nottingham in 1977, actress Samantha Morton began her career as a teenager, gaining acclaim in the late '90s as one of the most promising British actresses of her generation.
She first appeared in small-screen roles, guest-starring in a number of popular British TV productions, which led to her appearance in period dramas and TV series like Band of Gold, Cracker (1994), Emma (1996) and Jane Eyre (1997). Morton's film career began very early when she appeared in Ray Kilby's The Token King (1993) aged 16 then went on to film This is the Sea (1997) and Carine Adler’s Under the Skin (1997), for which she won wide critical acclaim for her wrenching portrayal of a young woman driven to promiscuous self-destructive behaviour by the death of her mother. The film was screened at the 54th Venice International Film Festival in the British Renaissance section. The following year she played the girlfriend of a small-time crook in The Last Yellow (1999) and also starred in Dreaming of Joseph Lees (1999), interpreting the role of a young woman harbouring romantic feelings for her second cousin, played by Rupert Graves. Starting in 1999, Morton's name became increasingly familiar to American filmgoers, thanks to starring roles in two very different films. In Jesus’ Son (1999), a film presented in competition at the 56th Venice International Film Festival, she was cast in the role of Michelle, a beautiful heroin addict who is the love interest of a young junkie. In Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, Morton played with great empathy the role of a mute woman, the protagonist of a complicated love affair with Emmet Ray, the legendary jazz guitarist played by Sean Penn. The film was presented out of competition at the 56th Venice International Film Festival (1999). For this performance Morton received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Undeterred by the unexpected visibility, the actress immediately set to work, appearing in Julian Temple’s Pandemonium (2000) and Amos Gitai’s Eden (2001), which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in competition in 2001. Steven Spielberg cast her in a pivotal role in Minority Report (2002), as Agatha, one of the three clairvoyant "Precogs". In 2002 she played the title character in Morvern Callar, the adaptation of Alan Warner's cult novel by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, for which she received five Best Actress awards nominations and won at BIFA and Toronto. That same year, she landed the leading role in In America, Jim Sheridan’s acclaimed slice-of-life tale of an Irish family immigrating to New York City's Hell's Kitchen, for which she would receive her second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Actress.
In 2003 she played opposite Tim Robbins in Michael Winterbottom’s Code 46, a film competing at the 60th Venice International Film Festival. She was once again in Venice the following year with Enduring Love (2004), a film directed by Roger Michell, presented in the Venezia 61 Mezzanotte section. In 2005 she starred in The Libertine, directed by Laurence Dunmore. In 2006 she played Myra Hindley in the television film Longford directed by Tom Hooper, for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a TV series and a BAFTA Awards nomination also for Best Supporting Actress. In 2007 she played a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who befriends a Michael Jackson impersonator in Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Festival (2007). That same year she played Deborah Woodruff, wife of musician Ian Curtis, in the biopic dedicated to the lead singer of the English band Joy Division. After playing a supporting role as Mary, Queen of Scots in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) opposite Cate Blanchett, in 2008 Samantha Morton appeared in Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman’s long-awaited directorial debut. She starred as a war widow in The Messenger (2009), directed by Oren Moverman. The film premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was in competition at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay. In 2009 Samantha Morton made her directorial debut, directing and producing The Unloved, she co-wrote with Tony Grisoni and produced with Kate Ogborn; broadcast on Channel4 the film was nominated for three BAFTAs and won one for Best Single Drama. The Unloved also won Morton a nomination for the Douglas Hickox award, as a British director in her directorial Debut at the BIFAs in 2009. The film forms the first part of a trilogy and Morton is currently in pre-production for the second film.
In 2012 Morton co-starred in Cosmopolis, a film adaptation based on the novel of the same name by Don DeLillo directed by David Cronenberg. The film premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Earlier this year Morton filmed on Decoding Anna Parker- Steven Bernstein’s directing debut, and has recently finished shooting on the latest Spike Jonze’s movie Her opposite Joaquin Phoenix.
Morton also serves as Film Editor on the international magazine Port.

 

Pablo Trapero began his international career in 1999 releasing Mundo Grúa his first feature, it was presented at Venice, harvesting awards and critical acclaim through film festivals around the globe. The black and white, 16mm film was a breaking point in Argentinean Cinema and encouraged young directors into their first features.

In 2002, his second feature, El Bonaerense premiered at Cannes, again with critical and audience acclaim. He opened his own production company in Buenos Aires, Matanza Cine, from which he has produced ever since other film makers features apart from his own.

As a director he’s also done Familia Rodante (2004) which debuted at Venice Film Festival, Nacido y Criado (2006) fared at Toronto Film Festival, Leonera (2008), first director's feature competing at Cannes Film festival, Carancho (2010) fared at Cannes Film Festival, Un certain regard.

All these films have been commercially released in Argentina and abroad, and also presented in major film festivals around the world. Apart from his features films has been part of collective films such as Sobras, (from large film "Stories on Human Rights"), Nómade (included in "25 miradas - 200minutos") and Naif (for the feature film "Visual Telegrams").

In 2012 Trapero is presenting as a producer “Caito” directed by Guillermo Pfening and has released his last feature Elefante Blanco and 7 Days in Havana, both screened at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.