The Venice Film Festival celebrates its Jubilee. Founded on 6th August, 1932 at the Lido di Venezia, the oldest film festival in the world celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. That same year 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 programme presented within the framework of the Venice Film Festival.
During the 64th edition of the Mostra (29th August - 8th September, 2007), directed by Marco Müller and organised by the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Davide Croff, 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 programme will be the Ein-Minuten-Filme, mini-films lasting just 60 seconds that Kluge has realised over the past 40 years, above all for the German ZDF and Swedish SVT television.
“As to what cinema truly is, only hypotheses rather than certainties continue to exist”, declared the Festival director, Marco Müller. “We have thus asked Alexander Kluge to reconsider the morphological history of cinema and the other arts for us: the fruitful substratum that has resulted from the continuous movements between neighbouring cultural bedrocks and, in particular, the relationship between cinema, the visual arts, music and opera. Kluge has succeeded in condensing this relationship with admirable grace and unstable equilibrium in his “cinema pills”, which also include episodes filmed at the Lido in the 1960s. I am grateful to Kluge for having accepted, with this innovative programme designed specially for the Festival, to be the “tutelary deity” for the 75th anniversary, because it helps us consider this date not as being something fixed, a point of arrival in some way. Like few others, he has been able to avoid the danger in cinema that a continuous materialisation kills off rather than stimulates, unless there are some caesuras in which fantasy can find a place. It will thus be he to open those caesuras within the palimpsest of the Jubilee Festival. An untiring initiator of paths and new initiatives since the early 1960s, this great film director has the same age as the Festival, but he has lost nothing of the contagious liveliness with which he animated the start of Young German Cinema.”
Alexander Kluge has also been one of the most rewarded film-makers in the history of the Venice Film Festival. On top of the Silver Lion – Special Jury Prize, obtained in 1966 with his first feature film, Abschied von gestern (Yesterday girl), and the Golden Lion in 1968 for Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos (Artists under the Big Top: Perplexed) – the latest award assigned him by the Festival before a long interruption caused by the political and cultural policies of protest – Alexander Kluge was also one of the directors awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 1982, for the 50th anniversary of the Festival.
The complete programme to be realised by Alexander Kluge for the 75th anniversary of the Venice Film Festival includes various materials exploring subjects such as the pre-cinema and silent cinema, as well as the effervescent climate that saw the establishment of Young German Cinema in the 1960s. The most extravagant and visionary grouping of materials will be reserved for a nocturnal screening after midnight.
The Kluge programme for the 64th Venice Film Festival have been realised in collaboration with German Films, Goethe-Institut –which will publish a dedicated illustrated catalogue for the occasion– Filmmuseum München, Zweitausendeins, Kinowelt International, Bundesfilmstiftung, dctp, and Kairos-film.
Venice, 9th May 2007
