Venice, 16th July 2008
The following jurors have been nominated to join president Wim Wenders on the International Jury for the Competition of the 65th Venice Film Festival (August 27 – September 6 2008), directed by Marco Müller and organized by the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta.
They are Russian screenwriter Juriy Arabov, a significant voice in contemporary Russian cinema; Italian actress Valeria Golino, the winner of the Coppa Volpi in Venice at the early age of twenty, and one of the most beloved Italian actresses abroad; British visual artist Douglas Gordon, internationally renowned and acknowledged by major artistic institutions throughout the world; American cult filmmaker John Landis, who experiments in virtually every film genre with a scathing, satirical point of view; young director Lucrecia Martel, the most significant female voice in New Argentine Cinema; and Hong Kong director Johnnie To, representing the best contemporary Asian cinema and who has featured prominently in the recent history of the Venice Film Festival.
On September 6th, the closing night of the Festival, the Venice 65 International Jury will award the following 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 Prize for Best New Young Actor or Actress, the Osella for Best Technical Contribution, and the Osella for Best Screenplay.
In recent years the competition juries have awarded the Golden Lion to Vera Drake by Mike Leigh (2004), Brokeback Mountain by Ang Lee (2005), Still Life (Sanxia haoren) by Jia Zhang-ke (2006) and Lust, Caution (Se, Jie) by Ang Lee (2007).
Biographical Notes
Juriy Arabov (Moscow, Russia, 1954) is the author of many subjects and screenplays for film and television. He graduated as a screenwriter from the VGIK (Russian State Institute of Cinematography) in 1980. A poet and philosopher, he chose to devote his career to screenwriting, though he continued to write poetry and novels starting in the early Seventies. Later, in the early Eighties, he promoted the foundation of a Poetry Club in Moscow, a semi-clandestine association that attracted poets and intellectuals, including many protagonists of culture alternative to the regime. The author of several collections of poetry: “Prostaya Zhizn” (“A Simple Life”), “Nenastoyashchaya saga” (“An Untrue Saga”), he became known as a “meta-metaphorical” poet and published numerous prose works, including the novels “Big beat”, “Yunye gody Danta” (“The Early Years of Dante”) and the historical-philosophical book “Mechanika sudeb” (“The Mechanics of Destinies”). He has won the Mednyj Vsadnik award, the Apollon Grigoriev award, the Boris Pasternak Award for literature. Since 2002 he has been professor of screenwriting at the VGIK, and considers his work as a teacher at the university to be very important. It was there that he met Aleksandr Sokurov in 1976. They made their film debut together in The Lonely Human Voice (Odinokij golos cheloveka, 1978), which was banned until 1987 and was the first in a series of successful collaborations. Starting in the Eighties, in fact, Arabov wrote the screenplays for many of the Sokurov’s films: Painful Indifference (Skorbnoye Beschuvstviye, 1987), The Days of Eclipse (Dni Zatmeniya, 1988), Save and Protect (Spasi i sokhrani, 1989), The Second Circle (Krug Vtoroy, 1990), The Stone (Kamen’, 1992), Mother and Son (Mat i syn, 1997), Moloch (Molokh, 1999), Taurus (Teletz, 2001), and The Sun (Solntse, 2005).
In addition to the long and prolific collaboration with Sokurov, Arabov has written many screenplays dedicated to “the silver age” of Russian culture, including the first mystical thriller in Russian cinema: Mister Designer (Gospodin Oformitel, 1988) by Oleg Teptsov. Arabov has written important screenplays for various talents in contemporary Russian cinema: Miracle (Chudo) (filming in 2008) by Aleksandr Proshkin, Diva (Yuryev den, 2008) by Kirill Serebrennikov, The Terror that is Always with You (Uzhas, kotoryy vsegda s toboy, 2007), by Arkadiu Yakhnis, Apocrypha: Music for Peter and Paul (Apokrif: Muzyka dlya Petra I Pavla, 2005) by Adel Al-Khadad, Presence (Prisustviye, 1992) by Andrei Dobrovolsy, Sfinks (1990) by Andrei Dobrovolsky, and Posvyashchyonnyy (1989) by Oleg Teptsov. In addition he wrote the mini-series for television Zaveshchaniye Lenina (2007) by Nikolai Dostal, Delo o mortvykh dushakh (2005) by Pavel Lungin, Doktor Zhivago (2006) by Aleksandr Proshkin. “Using Yurij’s talent for film is like hammering nails into the wall with a glass vase instead of a hammer, his screenplays are like self-sufficient works, they are refined works of art” (Alexandr Sokurov).
