63rd Venice Film Festival was opened on August 30th.
Just to give you an idea of what it is going to happen, here are some headlines and useful information about the Film Festival…
Organized by the Venice Biennale, the Festival will be held – as always – on the Venice Lido from August 30th to September 9th, 2006.
The opening ceremony will be hosted by Italian actress Isabella Ferrari and will be followed by the world premiere of Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, that screens in competition.
Four international juries will assign the official awards of the Festival: the Venezia 63 jury will award the Golden Lion for best film; the Corto Cortissimo jury will award the Corto Cortissimo Lion for Best Short Film; the Orizzonti jury will award the Orizzonti prize for new international film trends; the Luigi De Laurentiis jury will award the Lion of the Future, for which all the debut full-length films presented in the various sections of the Festival are eligible.
The big shots called to be jurymen for this Festival edition are the Spanish director Juan José Bigas Luna, the Portuguese producer Paulo Branco, the American producer and scenarist Cameron Crowe, the Russian actress Chulpan Khamatova, the Korean producer and screenplayer Park Chan-wook, the Italian director and actor Michele Placido. Foreman of the jury is the one of France’s best known actresses, Catherine Deneuve.
David Lynch will be awarded with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
The Festival also includes retrospectives and homages to major figures, as a contribution towards a better awareness of the history of cinema. 
In this edition, too, the Festival will screen in competition a “surprise film”, the title of which will be revealed only after the official opening. In the last two editions, the Surprise Films were Kim Ki-duk’s Bin-jip (2004) and Takeschi Kitano’s “Takeshis” (2005).
A larg squad of VIPs and stars will light the Festival. Just to name a few: Sandra Bullock, Josh Hartnett, the new ‘James Bond’ Daniel Craig, Zhang Ziyi, Kenneth Branagh, Sting, Meryl Streep, Ethan Hawke, Juliette Binoche, Val Kilmer, Scarlett Johansson, Lindsey Lohan, Jackie Chan, the Italian actors Sergio Castellitto and Laura Morante and the famous Italian composer and singer Lucio Dalla.
Do you want to know more? Visit http://www.labiennale.org/en/
In the meanwhile, I’ll collect the most curious and interesting stuff for you.
Here’s one: another Film Festival will take place in October, for the first time in Rome, and the guest of honor will be no less than Nicole Kidman!
Well, guess what? Mr. Mueller, Director of the Venice Film Festival, today stated that the Rome Film Festival will just be the waste-basket for films that neither Cannes or Venice wanted for their competition.
What a start for a new venture!
So, the 63rd Venice Film Festival hasn’t even started, and they’re are already quarreling.
My advice… stay tuned!