INTERFILM will be present officially at the Mostra del Cinema, the International Film Festival in Venice, for the first time. During the festival INTERFILM, together with its Italian partner organisation Associazione protestante Cinema “Roberta Sbaffi”, organizes two panel discussions. Both are intended to promote cinema as platform of an intercultural and interreligious dialogue by exploring the complex relations between film art, cultures and societies.

The first event will be held on 2nd of September 2008, in the Lutheran Church at Campo SS. Apostoli, and will be dedicated to Ingmar Bergman. After a screening of Bergman’s film “Wild Strawberries”, INTERFILM president Hans Hodel, Peter Ciaccio, president of the “Roberto Sbaffi” film organisation, and Charles Martig, film commissioner of the Catholic Media Service in Switzerland, will discuss the unique contribution of Bergman as “Inspired Interpreter of Modern Uncertainty”.

On September 3rd a second event will be organised at the Lido Festival Centre. An international panel will discuss about the last wave of Chinese films: “To Live or to Survive? Stimuli and Challenges of Contemporary Chinese Cinema”. Speakers at this event will be, among others, Dario E. Viganò, president of the Fondazione Ente dello Spettacolo, the Catholic cinema organisation in Italy, and Karsten Visarius, Executive Director of INTERFILM. Gianna Urizio, TV producer and journalist of the RAI, will chair both panels.

(To read the speech of Karsten Visarius, Executive Director of INTERFILM, on the Chinese cinema of today please click here.)