By Andrew McCathie Aug 24, 2007, 16:27 GMT
Venice - The Venice Film Festival is marking its 75th birthday this year by confirming its credentials as a major showcase for modern Asian cinema.
In addition to a strong line-up of US movies in its main competition, the world's oldest film festival has included a large contingent of films from leading figures in Asia's burgeoning movie business in the 22-film race for its top honours.
This includes Chinese actor-turned-director Jiang Wen and a new spy thriller from Taiwan-born director Ang Lee, whose Brokeback Mountain won the Leone d'Oro (Golden Lion) for best film in 2005 just months before it won an Oscar.
At the same time, Venice festival director Marco Mueller has acknowledged Egypt as the Middle East's film industry powerhouse by also giving a berth in the main competition to legendary Egyptian director Youssef Chahine.
His film, Le Chaos (Heya fawda), is a gritty tale about contemporary Cairo as told through the life of a corrupt but loveable policeman. All films in the festival's main competition are world premieres.
One of the world's top film festivals, Venice opens on Wednesday with London born director Joe Wright's adaptation Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan's novel Atonement.
Starring Keira Knightly, James McAvoy and Vanessa Redgrave, Atonement, a joint British-US production, is about the personal upheavals that follows claims by a young writer about a crime her elder sister's lover was suppose to have committed.
Hollywood will be supplying the glamour for Venice this year with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson and Richard Gere expected to arrive for gala screenings in Venice underscoring the importance that the US movie business attaches to the festival.
Indeed, about one third of the entries in Venice's main competition are from the United States or Britain including Todd Haynes' I'm Not There and Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
This year's festival will showing more than 50 world premieres across its various sections.
Held on Venice's famous Lido in the Palace del Cinema, the festival is mounted just as the European summer is fading and with the spectacle of A-list celebrities floating in gondolas along the Grand Canal giving the festival its own unique sense of charm.
The Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia emerged from the dark years surrounding World War II to celebrate the rise of Italian cinema and Italy's La Dolce Vita by featuring directors such as Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.
More recently, however, Venice has been at the forefront of film festivals promoting Asian cinema with this year's main competition including new movies from four Asian directors.
A further three movies from Asia have been included in the festival as out of competition entries with another four films in its Orizzonti (Horizons) section, which seeks to celebrate new trends in cinema.
This includes Chinese director Jia Zhangke's documentary Useless (Wu Yong) about leading Chinese fashion designer Ma Ke and her brand name, Wu Yong.
A surprise entry and screened at midnight, Jia Zhangke's Still Life about the impact on people's lives of China's massive Three- Gorges Dam project went on to win the Golden Lion last year.
Among those vying for a Leone d'Oro this year will be Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (Se, jie) which is set in wartime Shanghai, Taiwan's Lee Kang Sheng's Help Me Eros (Bangbang wo aishen) and Jiang Wen's The Sun Also Rises (Taiyang zhaochnag shengqi).
Also to be screened in the main competition is Japanese director Takashi Miike's action drama Sukiyaki Western Django which stars American director Quentin Tarantino, who will also host a retrospective of spaghetti westerns at the festival.
Jiang Wen's movie, which is about a man trying to come to terms with his wife's infidelity, was surprisingly dropped at the last moment from the final line up for the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
Lee Kang Sheng, who has established a name for himself as the main actor in several films by leading Taiwanese director Tsai Ming- liang's films, returns to the director's chair with his comic-drama Help Me Eros about three people seeking to re-establish links with those around them.
The downward spiral of the war in Iraq is also to be featured in Venice with two films - Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah offering a glimpse of the life of soldiers in the conflict and Brian De Palma's Redacted, which stars Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron and tells the story of a war veteran who has gone missing.
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