Shirin Neshat and Fatih Akin to chair the International Orizzonti Jury and the “Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film
Iranian artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat – Silver Lion for Best Director at the 66th Venice Film Festival in 2009 with her first feature film, Women without Men (Zanan bedoone mardan), and Golden Lion at the 48th Art Biennale in 1999 – and the German director of Turkish origin Fatih Akin, one of the best talents of European cinema – Special Jury Prize at the 66th Venice Film Festival in 2009 with Soul Kitchen – will chair respectively the International Juries of the Orizzonti section, this year open to all films in “unusual formats”, and of the “Luigi di Laurentiis” Award for a Debut Film at the 67th Venice International Film Festival (September 1-11, 2010). The decision was taken by La Biennale di Venezia’s Board of Directors, chaired by Paolo Baratta, accepting the proposal of the Director of the Venice International Film Festival, Marco Mueller.
Shirin Neshat, the most famous Iranian photographer and video artist, marked her debut in film directing in 2009 with Women without men (Zanan bedoone mardan), presented with great success at its world premiere in competition at the 66th Venice Film Festival, and awarded the Silver Lion for Best Director. The works of Shirin Neshat in the visual arts address the social and religious themes that shape the identity of Muslim women. In 1999, she was awarded the Golden Lion at the 48th Biennale Art Exhibition for her video installations, Turbulent and Rapture. Previously, she received numerous awards for the Women of Allah series, photographs of women whose faces are veiled by dense and obsessive calligraphic meshes. Her work has been exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Kunsthalle Wien and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Hiroshima.
Fatih Akin (born in Hamburg in 1973 into a family of Turkish origin) is one of the most important new directors in European cinema, and already an established figure at major international festivals. His last film Soul Kitchen won at the 66th Venice Film Festival in 2009 the Special Jury Prize. In 1998, Akin’s feature film debut, Kurz und Schmerzlos (Short Sharp Shock), was awarded the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. In 2004, with Gegen die Wand (Head-on) Akin won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the award for best film at the European Film Awards. In 2007, Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven) took the award for best screenplay at the Cannes Festival and at the European Film Awards.
The International Jury of the Orizzonti section – this year open to all “extra-format” works, with a broader and more dynamic overview of the new forms adopted by the expressive languages used in cinema – will be composed of five personalities from the world of cinema and culture from various countries, headed by Shirin Neshat, and will attribute four new awards: the Orizzonti Award (full-length films), the Special Orizzonti Jury Prize (full-length films), the Orizzonti Award (short films), and the Orizzonti Award (medium-length films). No ex aequo awards are permitted. In a drive to rationalize the programming framework, this program will absorb not only the “CortoCortissimo” section, but also all the “Special Events”. This section, without distinctions of genre and duration, will become a “laboratory” of the different artistic languages of visual arts within the larger “workshop” that La Biennale di Venezia actually embodies, in increasingly close touch with the other sectors.
The International Jury for the “Luigi di Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film, chaired by Fatih Akin and consisting of five personalities from the world of cinema and culture from various countries, including a producer, will choose among all the debut feature films in the various competitive sections of the Festival (Official Selection and independent, parallel sections), and award the Lion of the Future – “Luigi di Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film, along with $100,000 donated by Filmauro Aurelio De Laurentiis, to be shared equally between the director and producer (no ex aequo awards permitted).
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Shirin Neshat (President of the Orizzonti Jury)
Shirin Neshat was born in Qazvin (Iran) in 1957. She is an Iranian photographer and video artist who in her work tackles the complex social and religious forces that shape the identity of Muslim women. Raised in a middle-class family living in the West, she moved to Los Angeles in 1974 to study art at the University of California Berkeley. In 1979, the Ayatollahs’ Islamic revolution broke out in Iran and prevented her from returning home until 1990. Shirin’s artistic emergence developed through photography with Women of Allah, the cycle she produced between 1993 and 1997, which has received numerous awards.
Over the past 12 years, Shirin Neshat has produced a series of lyrical video installations dealing with issues such as gender politics, cultural self-determination and the authority of religion. Drawing on her experience as a Middle Eastern expatriate and on universal concepts such as identity, desire and social isolation, these works have won numerous awards including the Golden Lion at the 48th International Art Exhibition organized by La Biennale. She has held personal exhibitions in, among others, the Tate Gallery in London, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Kunsthalle in Vienna and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Hiroshima. Since 2003, Shirin Neshat has embarked on an ambitious video/film project in two parts, based on the 1989 novel, “Women without Men” by Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur. The five individual videos of the project – Mahdokht (2004), Zarin (2005), Munis (2008), Faezeh (2008) and Farokh Legha (2008) – each of which focuses on one of the female characters in the novel, have recently been assembled into a single installation in several rooms. After the first exhibition in 2008 in Denmark at the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, this complex work has been presented at the Faurschou Gallery in Beijing, and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. In the autumn, it will be shown at the Kulturhuset in Stockholm and in other locations to be confirmed. In addition, four of the videos were shown at the Biennale Art Exhibition, “Prospect. 1 New Orleans”, last year.
While she was filming the videos (largely funded by the Gladstone Gallery in New York and the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris), Shirin Neshat also worked on her feature film, Women Without Men (Zanan bedoone mardan). This film, inspired by both the novel and the videos, has a dream narrative that interweaves the personal stories of the protagonists with the political upheaval in Tehran in 1953, the period in which the Parsipur novel is set.
In making both the videos and film, Shirin Neshat has worked closely with her usual collaborator, Shoja Azari, who co-wrote the final screenplay with her. The film, shot in Casablanca, is played primarily by Iranian actors living in Europe and also includes a narration written by the poet and art critic, Steven Henry Madoff. At its world premiere at the 66th Venice Film Festival, the film won the Silver Lion from the jury chaired by Ang Lee.
Fatih Akin (President of the “Luigi di Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film Jury)
Fatih Akin was born in 1973 in Hamburg to Turkish parents. He studied visual communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg from 1994 to 2000. With his first short film, Sensin – Du bist es! (1995), he won the audience award at the Hamburg International Short Film Festival. In 1998, at the age of 24, he became the rising star of German cinema with his first feature film, Kurz und Schmerzlos (Short Sharp Shock), in which, recounting the lives in Hamburg of three friends of Turkish, Greek and Serbian nationality, he tackled the theme of the international encounters that he would subsequently explore further. The film won the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival in 1998. Two years later, he made a road movie, Im Juli (In July), and the documentary Denk ich an Deutschland – Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren (We forgot to go back) which examined the history of his emigrant family. In 2002, he made Solino, the chronicle of a family of Italian immigrants in Duisburg.
In 2003 he co-founded his production company corazón international with his partners Andreas Thiel and Klaus Maeck. The production company corazón international realises not only Akins projects but also those of other talented writers and directors.
Gegen die Wand (Head on) was his international breakthrough in 2004, a depiction of Turkish culture and the difficulties of integration into Germany, which received the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the award for Best Director at the German Film Awards and European Film Awards. In 2005 in Cannes, he presented his documentary, Crossing the Bridge – The Sound of Istanbul, on the multi-faceted music scene today in Turkey. In 2007, he made his fifth feature film, The Edge of Heaven (Auf der Anderen Seite), which also won numerous awards, including one for Best Screenplay at Cannes and at the European Film Awards. He filmed an episode shot for the collective film New York, I Love You, and the following year took part in another similar project: Deutschland 09 (Germany 09), comprising thirteen shorts that focused on contemporary Germany. For his short, Der Name Murat Kurnaz (Being Murat Kurnaz), Akin chose the story of a German Muslim who has returned from Guantanamo.
In 2009, he won the Special Jury Prize at the 66th Venice Film Festival with his comedy Soul Kitchen. Written with actor Adam Bousdoukos, Soul Kitchen featured actors who have previously worked with Akin, such as Moritz Bleibtreu, who appeared in Im Juli and Solino, and Birol Ünel, who was also in Im Juli and starred in Head-on.
Fatih Akin is currently working on a documentary, Garbage in the Garden of Eden (working title) on the struggle launched by the inhabitants of Camburnu, a village in the mountains of Turkey, against the planned construction of a landfill site in the midst of tea plantations in their idyllic region.
