Last Minute Venice Surprises: Hana Makhmalbaf, Joe Dante’s 1968 Orgy and Peter Greenaway’s The Marriage

Joe Dante will be presenting not one, but two films at the Lido. The Venice Film Festival will be presenting Dante’s latest film – the 3D supernatural called The Hole and will include a re-cut showing for The Movie Orgy – Ultimate Version. The stitched together pic, that Dante made during his student days, is a back-breaking 280-minute look at the B films from the 50’s and 60’s which I’m sure would be a blast for film aficionados like Quentin Tarantino. The 66th Venice International Film Festival will also include a film from the Makhmalbaf. Youngest member Hana will show Green Days, which looks at women in Iran in docu form and fiction, this will be shown Out of Competition.

Also showing is Angela Ismailos’s Great Directors. There was a private screening at Cannes which I couldn’t make and I regret, since it looks at contemporary cinema and talks with Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Todd Haynes, Richard Linklater, Ken Loach, David Lynch, John Sayles and Agnès Varda. This will be added to the Both Orizzonti section along with Peter Greenaway’s The Marriage, which is dedicated to artist Veronese’s painting The Wedding at Cana. Greenway recently explored the painting through a multi-media art installation in Venice.