Venice is also synonymous with great cinema, and is home to the oldest film festival in the world. The International Film Festival of the Venice Biennale has just celebrated its first ninety years and, while awaiting the 80th edition, the Ateneo Veneto has taken the opportunity to organize a meeting that starts from past history to arrive at future prospects of this extraordinary festival which, edition after edition, presents films in the lagoon that continue to mark eras and to hoard the major international awards, including the Golden Globes 2023. The president of the Biennale Roberto Cicutto, the film critic Michele Gottardi and the doyen of film history and criticism Gian Piero Brunetta, author of the volume The Venice International Film Festival 1932 – 2022 (Venice, Marsilio 2022). Page after page, in his volume, Brunetta narrates the succession «of courageous leaders and captains, of fighters, explorers, discoverers, ferrymen, negotiators, respectful officials, grands commis de l’État, papal directors, shadow and transit directors, as well as of competent, balanced, courageous, incompetent, unpredictable, distracted, conformist, other-directed and trained juries». Weaving and knotting multiple threads, so as to include the role of the presidents, the work and strategies of the directors and the salient features of the various editions, the author draws a colorful tapestry and describes with the “high tones of the epic” the alternation of tastes, fashions, controversies and ideologies which are the moral and aesthetic mirror of a century of Italian life. Giving constant emphasis to the interaction between critics, the public and politics – and with an eye to the directors and films that more than others have brought prestige – the Exhibition becomes an opportunity to tell a century of history of cinema and civilization of the vision.
