What to see in Venice

The Transformers saga, from its origin as an animated series, doesn’t stop representing one of the most constant battles between universal good and evil. But, are we sure? No, not exactly. And it’s because Transformers, like many other mass culture products, just persists in violence and sells to the world the hierarchy of certain nations above others, the abuse of power as well as fascism. The plot of Transformers is pretty simple: according to the first version of the cartoons, a group of alien robots arrives to Earth in the middle of a great battle, between the ‘good’, the ‘Autobots’, and the ‘bad’, the ‘Decepticons’. After a crash landing, both sides arrive on Earth to carry on their war in the middle of humanity, which is completely astonished in front of the presence of such aliens.

The problem here is understanding Transformers further than entertainment. In the recent film ‘Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon’, we’re once again in front of an ‘American’ country that has knowledge above the rest, and that discovers in 1969 that, in fact, there’s alien life, and that the space race of that time between the USSR and the USA wasn’t but a reason to reach the discovery of an abandoned ship on the Dark Side of the Moon. Therefore, once again, all search of knowledge is just a cover up for the urgency of acquiring much more political power, which is actually power but hidden, the power of knowledge that’s not shared, that’s not publicised “due to international security measures”.

The war of Transformers isn’t but two big masses of armed, mechanical and futuristic power on a terrain that doesn’t belong to them, which is planet Earth. In this way, the near-apocalyptic devastation that occurs in the cities that are shown in the film, are just the desert or the jungle or the playing field of two great big power dimensions, that confront their power without the slightest interest of their surroundings. In the same way, the Autobots ‘agree’ to protect the human race and ‘liberate’ it from the iron fist of the Decepticons. Again, this has a loophole, and the judge tries to be the true authoritarian, that of justice.

If we could put a face on Megatron or Optimus Prime, the leaders of both sides, the faces of Berlusconi, Bush, Zapatero, Blair, Bin Laden (RIP), Obama, Rasputin, El Duce or whichever other could easily fit these transformable robotic bodies. Of course one must remember that fascism is everywhere and that there isn’t a good or bad side behind the screen, that the search and desire of power hasn’t stopped corrupting the interest of any subject, that the mega world enterprises are those who have control and that this is a corporate reality where ‘beings from other worlds’ don’t stop fighting to solve their own mafias, leaving the citizens to one side. Watch Transformers carefully and think. For more information visit: http://www.transformersmovie.com

Alexa Ray

Pay more attention when you watch a blockbuster movie from Hollywood, there’s always a message between the lines. This summer, get apartments in Venice and watch Transformers.

Contact Me 

Translated by: aleixgwilliam
Contact Me

Venice’s Biennale is an international contemporary art exhibition celebrated every two years. The first edition was celebrated on April 30th 1895. Among the artistic subjects that it encompasses we find visual arts, contemporary music, theatre, dance, film and architecture.

But let’s concentrate on the International Venice Film Festival (Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia). It’s a film festival that takes place every year in the Palazzo del Cinema, which is where they present the films that are entered in the contest. Although the festival is every year, it’s framed inside what’s known as the Biennale.

It will take place from the 31st of August until the 10th of September and there you’ll be able to enjoy great films by acclaimed directors and well-known actors.

Among the awards that are given there is the Golden Lion, which the jury gives to the best film. The Silver one goes to the best director and for the Great Prize of the Jury. To the best actor and actress they give the Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup).

They also award various Golden Lions to different people of the film world as recognition for their contribution.

This festival is considered a ‘Category A’, being credited by the International Federation of the Cinematographic Producers Association (FIAPF) together with other well-known ones such as the ones from San Sebastián, Berlin and Cannes among others.

The Festival has already revealed the presidents of its juries. For the Competition section, the most important is the American director, writer and producer Darren Aronofsky. For the Orizzonti section it will be the Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. For the Luigi de Laurentiis Prize to the best prime opera it’s Carlo Mazzacurati and for the Controcampo Italiano section it will be the Italian film director Roberta Torre.

Regarding the winners of the honorific Gold Lion it’s already known that they’re going to be awarded to Marco Bellocchio because, to quote the jury, he is “one of the biggest and most influential filmmakers of the last few decades in Italy”. Some of the most famous films of this director are In the name of the Father (1971), Marcia Trionfale (1975), The Conviction (1990), The Nanny (1998), My Mother’s Smile (2002), Good Morning, Night (2003) or Vincere (2009). After the prize award, a presentiation of the new unedited version of In the Name of the Father will take place with the original film material.

The American actor Al Pacino will receive the Jäger-LeCoultre award. It will be in a gala on the 4th of September which will precede the world premiere of his third film as a director, the documentary Wilde Salome, based on the life of Oscar Wilde.

The opening of the festival will take place on the 31st of August with the presentation of the world premiere of the latest George Clooney film, The Ides of March, written and directed by himself, which will run for the Golden Lion. It’s Clooney’s fourth film as a director after Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Good Night and Good Luck (2005) and Leatherheads (2008).

Ara

Visit the city of the canals and don’t miss out on going to the 68th edition of the International Venice Film Festival which is celebrated in the Palazzo del Cinema from the 31st of August until the 10th of September. And after enjoying the films, relax by renting apartments in Venice

Contact Me 

Translated by: aleixgwilliam
Contact Me

Until November 24 the Correr Museum in Venice will open the exhibition: Julian Schnabel. Permanently Becoming and the Architecture of Seeing, which goes back over the work of the New York artist. The exhibition coincides with the Venice Biennale, and is produced by the Artemis Group with the Foundation Musei Civici of Venice.

The exhibition curated by Norman Rosenthal presents 40 works from the 70′s to nowadays, by the most interesting American artist of the neo-expressionism and whose inspiring poetic is deeply influenced by the work of Jackson Pollock. Schnabel is a painter, sculptor, filmmaker and has also dabbled in music.

Julian Schnabel, son of a middle-class Jewish family, was born in New York in 1951. He studied art at the University of Houston, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts. He continued his studies at the Whitney Museum in New York. To enter it he sent an application presented as a conceptual work: he put his slides between two pieces of bread, just like a sandwich. While his work caused a stir, he was quickly approved for admission.

His career was not brilliant, but quite the opposite, and had to work as a cook for a long time to take his work forward. Only in 1975 could he expose individually at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston.

Schnabel’s work is part of the so-called Bad Painting art movement, current of neo-expressionism. Neo-Expressionism was born in Germany in the late seventies, strongly linked to the Italian transavartgarde and French figuration libre, which extends strongly enough to the U.S. This current is characterized by the brutality with which the lines and uses of decaying material are handled. His search for expressing the social transformations of modernity through the decay of some materials, locates it as a current characteristic of a decade which would drive the politic transformation for globalization, free markets and liberalism. Hence, it is known as “Wild” art.

One of the works that made Schnabel hit the art scene were his Plate Painting, large works worked with broken ceramic plates that led him to the Venice Biennale in 1989. In his work he uses kabuki theatre scenography, velvet fabrics with strong colours and elements that give a unique stamp works.

Schnabel’s genius also led him to movies and music. His three films: Basquiat (1996), Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) and Before Night Falls (2000) have been acclaimed at Cannes and the Venice Film Festival.

He has also dabbled in music recording with bassist and producer Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell, among who there is funk-rock album Every Has a Silverlining Cloud where Schnabel wrote the lyrics.

For further informacion http://www.museiciviciveneziani.it/frame.asp?pid=2044&musid=243&sezione=mostre

Nancy Guzman

A good alternative for this summer is Julian Schnabel’s exhibition. Permanently Becoming and the Architecture of Seeing in the Museum Correr if you are in apartments in Venice then you can scroll through the channels under the moonlight and dinner in a small trattoria.

Contact Me 

Translated by: Maria
Contact Me

Catalonia and the Balearic Islands will be represented at the next edition of the Venice Biennale by  the Catalan artist Mabel Palacin (Barcelona, 1965) under the curatorship of David G Torres (Barcelona, 1967).

Her art project was selected  from 28 other proposals submitted to the Ramon Llull Institute  as part of an international competition organized by the institute.  The jury included Bartolomeu Marí, Laurence Rassel, Joan Fontcuberta, Cristina Ros and David Bestué-Marc Vives.  

Mabel Palacin is a graduate in History of Art  and Photography and Video from the University of Barcelona. Since the beginning of her career she has worked with photography, videos and installations, focusing on multiple image formats. In her works the things that happen are not presented directly, but as mediated realities. She shows a fragmented reality in which the viewer has a fundamental role in the existence of the artistic act.

David G. Torres is curator, art critic and founder of the Independent Institute of Contemporary Art Criticism and A * Desk. Besides working in ” El Cultural” and writing the column  ”Dada Sight!” for magazine the Bonart, he has curated “The Fashion Party Is Over” (with Mai Abu ElDahab), “Intensities”, “No Future” for the Bloomberg Space in London and “Attitude!” in Montpellier. His line of work attempts to recover the radicalism in art, like the project “David G Torres presents: Out on the street and shooting at random” (2005), organized independently in a Barcelona underground space suggests.

The project entitled “180 degrees” will be shown between June 4 and November 27, 2011 on the occasion of the 54th edition of the Venice Biennale and will represent Catalonia and the Balearic Islands in the important international event. “180 degrees” is a work clearly inspired by film, whose title refers to the rule of 180 degree rule which marks the position of the characters involved in a dialogue so the viewer does not lose orientation on the scene. The work of Mabel Palacin part of a photograph of a place (apparently not significant) in high definition and split into multiple views which give rise to the micro-narratives at work in the installation. This work proposes a reflection on the role of image and its deconstruction and reconstruction in contemporary art.

Along with the visual work, the project foresees the publication of a book that will be both  archive and record it, which will collect the different elements that come together in “180 degrees” from the textual references to the fragmented images and video. The budget allocated for this project by the Ramon Llull Institute is 450,000 euros.

menschauser

Come see this interesting project up close when you rent apartments in Venice one of Italy´s most beautiful cities.

Contact Me 

Translated by: salome antigone
Contact Me

Apart from Film Festival in Cannes, the International Film Festival in Venice (Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica) is one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. Not only that but it is the world’s oldest film festival. It was founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 and it takes place every year in late August/early September on the Island of Lido. The 67th edition of the festival will take place from the 1st until the 11th of September this year.

Also important to mention is that its part of the Venice Biennale, a major exhibition and festival for contemporary art The main awards given out are the Golden Lion (Leone d’Oro) for the best film and the Volpi Cup (Coppa Volpi) for the best actor and actress. This year American director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds) will chair the International Jury for the main competition.

When we think about the film industry, many think “Hollywood” and images of blockbuster hits, the Walk of Fame, the Oscars, mansions of famous movie stars in the Hollywood Hills come to mind. Los Angeles may be where many of today’s major movie companies have their studios and film making has its origin in Venice Beach, California. But the industry is so much more than this! Some of the amazing films which have been awarded prizes at the Venice International Filmfestival include The Wrestler by Darren Aronofsky, Monsoon Wedding by Mira Nair or Hana-bi by Takeshi Kitano: unlike the Oscars, this festival looks to award quality films from around the world, not just blockbusters.

The historic Palazzo del Cinema is the main facility and screening theatre of the Venice Film Festival. To catch a glimpse of the action hop onto a vaporetto to Lido and for a comfortable stay rent Apartments in Venice.

http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema