Highlights from La Biennale di Venezia

Highlights from La Biennale di Venezia

September 18, 2019

This summer marked the 76th International Biennale Cinema festival in Venice. This festival showcases the best in cinema, art, architecture, dance, music, theater, and historical achievements. The mission of this renowned event is to “raise awareness and promote international cinema in all its forms as art, entertainment and as an industry, in a spirit of freedom and dialogue.” La Biennale di Venezia is one of the first film festivals of the season and they showcase films that are projected to be Oscar nominees. The following are highlights of the festival’s best film, arte, and fashion participants.

Film

The Golden Lion for Best Film went to Joker By Todd Phillips (USA).

The Silver Lion – Grand Jury Prize went to J’Accuse by Roman Polanski (France, Italy).

The Coppa Volpi for best actress went to Ariane Ascaride in the film, Gloria Mundi by Robert Guédiguian (France, Italy).

Image via Variety

The Coppa Volpi for best actor went to Luca Marinelli in the film, Martin Eden by Pietro Marcello (Italy, France).

Image via Variety

The award for best screenplay went to Yofan for the film, Ji Yuan Tai Qi Hao (No. 7 Cherry Lane) by Yonfan (Hong Kong SAR, China).

The Special Jury Prize went to La Mafia è Più Quella Di Una Volta by Franco Maresco (Italy).

The Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor or actress went to Toby Wallace in the film, Babyteeth by Shannon Murphy (Australia).

Image via The Sydney Morning Herald

Arte

The Golden Lion for best national participation went to Lithuania, Sun & Sea (Marina) by Lina Lapelyte, Vaiva Grainyte and Rugile Barzdziukaite.

La Biennale Di Venezia awarded this piece for “the experimental spirit of the Pavilion and its unexpected treatment of national representation. The jury was impressed with the inventive use of the venue to present a Brechtian opera as well as the Pavilion’s engagement with the city of Venice and its inhabitants. Sun & Sea (Marina) is a critique of leisure and of our times as sung by a cast of performers and volunteers portraying everyday people.”

A special mention for national participation was awarded to Belgium, Mondo Cane by Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys.

La Biennale Di Venezia awarded this piece beacuse it was “Unsparing in its humour, the Belgian Pavilion offered an alternative view of the under-recognised aspects of social relations across Europe. The uncanny staging of a series of fictional characters in the form of mechanised puppets based on folkloric stereotypes allow the Pavilion to act on several registers, while creating two if not more parallel realities.”

Golden Lion for the Best Participant in the International Exhibition May You Live In Interesting Times was awarded to Arthur Jafa.

La Biennale Di Venezia awarded this piece for “his 2019 film The White Album (venue: Central Pavilion, Giardini), which, in equal measure, is an essay, a poem and portraiture. Jafa uses appropriated and original footage to reflect upon the issue of race. Just as the film critiques a moment fraught with violence, in tenderly portraying the artist’s friends and family, it also speaks to our capacity for love.”

Image photographed by Andrea Avezzù, courtesy of La Biennale Venezia.

Image photographed by Italo Rondnella, courtesy of La Biennale Venezia.

Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition May You Live In Interesting Times was awarded to Haris Epaminonda.

La Biennale Di Venezia awarded this piece for “her carefully constructed constellations of images, objects, text, forms, and colours that are built out of fragmented memories, histories and imagined connections; for showing us that the personal and the historical can be compressed into a powerful yet loose web of multiple meanings.”