18/05/2002 - Moritz De Hadeln, the new director of the Mostra, held a press conference to explain his strategic views

Times are changing at Venice Film Festival's new director Moritz De Hadeln said that he intends proceeding in three directions: resolve the structural difficulties of Venice Lido; make the Mostra more independent of the Biennale, and create a proper market.
He said that two new screening rooms, the Astra 1 and 2, were ready for market screenings, and he hoped to enlarge the area set aside for meetings between distributors´, exhibitors´, the various festivals and promotional organisations. He also intended situating the international stands in the Lido gardens.
One of the four screening rooms will be set aside for Italia Cinema Agency to screen Italian films for international buyers. De Hadeln said that he had appointed Giorgio Gosetti, the director of the Italia Cinema, the official delegate for Italian film at the Mostra. «Italia Cinema will not be involved with the film selection process just as Unifrance, Italia Cinema´s French counterpart, would never dream of doing that here in Cannes.»
Although the programme is still being defined by De Hadeln, he did say that Michelangelo Antonioni would be the subject of a retrospective and that the 100th anniversary of Cesare Zavattini´s birth would also be celebrated. The programme foresees the screening of a number of films made in the former USSR that were screened in Venice between its inception in 1932 and 1942.