Freshly restored works by Andrej Wajda, Roberto Rossellini, Luis Buñuel, Roger Corman, John Cassavetes and Ann Hui are set to screen as part of the Venice Film Festival‘s 19-title Venice Classics lineup.
Wajda’s drama about postwar political and social chaos “Ashes and Diamonds,” which Martin Scorsese has called one of his ten favorite films; Rossellini’s marriage crisis movie “Journey to Italy,” starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders (pictured above); Buñuel’s absurdist comedy “Illusion Travels By Streetcar”; Corman’s biggest commercial success, “The Wild Angels” – which launched in competition at Venice in 1966 – and Cassavetes’ quirky romantic comedy “Minnie and Moskowitz” starring Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, are among highlights of the rich program.
Asian offerings include Dev Benegal’s landmark first film, the scathing satire “English, August,” and Hong Kong New Wave pioneer Ann Hui’s “The Story of Woo Viet,” which is one of the first political movies from Hong Kong.
“Nostalgia is not the underlying reason behind a section like Venice Classics,” said Venice chief Alberto Barbera in a statement. “If the goal consists in remembering the vitality back when “cinema was everything” (to borrow the words of [Italian novelist] Leonardo Sciascia), another consideration also comes to the fore: the awareness that the cinema of tomorrow can only be nourished by the lifeblood of the films of the past,” he added. “A vivid imagery made of great and unforgettable masterpieces that are only waiting to be revisited, and movies that are to some extent forgotten and that, instead, need to be carefully reconsidered,” Barbera concluded.
