29/07/2010

According to Venice Film Festival (September 1-11) director Marco Mueller, the new and improved Horizons sidebar will “stimulate attentive, vigil and passionate watching and offer in exchange a visual step forward”.

The previously announced opening and closing films – respectively, Sleeping Beauty by France’s Catherine Breillat and Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s Oki’s Movie – booked works that span genres (documentary and fiction), formats (film and digital) and running times (features as well as medium-length and short films, in Corto Cortissimo).

In this way, adds Mueller, the section “acknowledges the fluidity of contemporary cinema”. A fluidity that characterizes many of Horizon’s European titles.

Italy is present with Pasquale Scimeca’s Malavoglia, a contemporary adaptation of Giovanni Verga’s masterpiece; and Per questi stretti morire - Cartografia di una passione by Giuseppe M. Gaudino and Isabella Sandri, a mix of documentary and poetic reconstruction (that includes stop-motion animation) of the ghost of Father Alberto Maria De Agostini,.

Spanish director José Luis Guerin’s latest documentary, Guest, takes a trip around the world, while Gianfranco Rosi, whose Below Sea Level won Horizons two years ago, goes to further extremes (if that’s possible) in his nomadic cinema, in El Sicario, Room 164, the bloody biography of a Mexican drug runner.

Further documentaries include are two features from the UK – The Nine Muses by John Akomfrah, a look at migrant workers in Great Britain; and Robinson in Ruins by Patrick Keiller, a shrewd analysis of the 2008 financial crisis, narrated by Vanessa Redgrave and Austria/Dutch co-production The Forgotten Space.

Narrative works include Catalan director Lluís Galter’s Bresson-esque feature debut Caracremada; the absurdist comedy A Espada e a Rosa by Portugal’s João Nicolau; and French title Dharma Guns by F. J. Ossang.

Also of note, especially among the shorts and medium-length films, are hybrid works, by directors who, explains Venice Biennale president Paolo Baratta, “come from a diverse range of expressive backgrounds. In this way, Horizons is a ‘laboratory’ of various artistic languages, within the greater ‘laboratory’ of the Biennale itself”.

Opening film
Sleeping Beauty - Catherine Breillat
France

Closing Film
Oki's Movie - Hong Sang-soo
South Korea

The Nine Muses (documentary) - John Akomfrah
UK, Ghana

The Forgotten Space - Noel Burch and Allan Sekula
Netherlands, Austria

Nainsukh - Amit Dutta
Switzerland, India

Caracremada - Lluís Galter
Spain

Per questi stretti morire (ovvero cartografia di una passione) - Giuseppe Gaudino and Isabella Sandri
Italy

Guest (documentary) - José Luis Guerin
Spain

Jean Gentil - Laura Amelia Guzman and Israel Cardenas
Dominican Republic, Mexico, Germany

Reconstructing Faith (documentary) - Huang Wenhai
China

Robinson in Ruins (documentary) - Patrick Keiller
UK

Zelal (documentary) - Marianne Khoury and Mustapha Hasnaoui
Egypt, France

Anti Gas Skin - Kim Gok and Kim Sun
South Korea

News from Nowhere - Paul Morrisey
USA

A Espada e a Rosa - João Nicolau
Portugal, France

Dharma Guns - F. J. Ossang
France, Portugal

Verano de Goliat - Nicolás Pereda
Mexico, Canada

El Sicario Room 164 - Gianfranco Rosi
France, Italy

When We Were Communists (documentary) - Maher Abi Samra
Lebanon, France, UAE.

Malavoglia - Pasquale Scimeca
Italy

Cold Fish - Sion Sono
Japan

Horizons medium-length and short films

House - Doug Aitken
USA

Weak Rot Front - Victor Alimpiev
Russia

Il Capo (documentary) - Yuri Ancarani

Italy

En el Futuro - Mauro Andrizzi
Argentina

Shadow Cuts - Martin Arnold
Austria

El Pozo - Guillermo Arriaga
Mexico

Woman I - Nuntanat Duangtisarn
Thailand

Non si può nulla contro il vento - Flatform
Italy

The Agent - Vincent Gallo
USA

Crust - Huang Wenhai
China

Mouse Palace - Harald Hund and Paul Horn
Austria

Four Seasons - Chaisiri Jiwarangsan
Thailand

Red Earth - Clara Law
China, Hong Kong, Australia

Atom - Markus Loeffler and Andrée Korpys
Germania

The Life and Death of Henry Darger - Bertrand Mandico
France, Iceland

Magic for Beginners - Jesse McLean
USA

Inspiration - Galina Myznikova and Sergey Provorov
Russia

Painéis de São Vicente de Fora, Visão Poética - Manoel de Oliveira
Portugal

The External World (animation) - David Oreilly
Germany

On Rubiks' Road (documentary) - Laila Pakalnina
Latvia

Man in a Room - Rafael Palacio Illingworth
USA, Mexico, Switzerland

Diane Wellington - Arnaud des Pallières
France

Les Barbares - Jean Gabriel Périot
France

The Future will not be Capitalist (documentary) - Sasha Pirker
Austria

O mundo é belo - Luiz Pretti
Brazil

Stardust - Nicolas Provost
Belgium

Cold Clay, Emptiness... - SJ Ramir
New Zealand

The Futurist - Emily Richardson
UK

Out - Roee Rosen
Israel

John's Gone - Josh Safdie e Benny Safdie
USA

Indefatigable (documentary) - Ruth Jarman e Joe Gerhardt
Ecuador, UK

21 Grams (animation) - Xun Sun
China

How to pick Berries (documentary) - Elina Talversaari
Finland

La linea generale - Oleg Tcherny
France

Coming Attractions - Peter Tscherkassy
Austria

The Death of an Insect - Hannes Vartianen e Pekka Veikkolainen
Finland

Mechanic of Spring (animation) - Atsushi Wada
Japan

Fading (documentary) - Olivier Zabat
France

720 Degrees - Ishtiaque Zico

Bangladesh

Casus Belli - Georgios Zois
Greece

Horizons Out of Competition
k.364 a journey by train (documentary) - Douglas Gordon
UK, France

A Loft - Ken Jacobs
USA

The Leopard - Isaac Julien
UK

Un anno dopo Progetto Memory Hunters (documentary) - Carlo Liberatore, Matteo Di Bernardino, Antonio Iacobone, Stefano Ianni, Marco Castellani et. al.
Italy

(Translated from Italian)