23rd Festival 1976

Michelangelo Antonioni and actor Giancarlo Giannini headed a delegation from Italy for a special ‘Salute to Italian Film’. American Gideon Bachmann, who co-ordinated the Italian programme, presented a special session on Pasolini’s last film Sale, 120 Days of Sodom. Luchino Visconti’s last film, The Intruder, closed the festival. The other Italian films screened were Francesco Rosi’s Cadaveri Eccellenti, Marco Bellocchio’s Triumphal March, Nice Naldini’s Fascista, Guilio Paradisi’s Ragazzo di Borgata and Flavia Mongheri’s Culastrice nobile Veneziano.

The festival opened with Lina Wertmuller’s Seven Beauties. Forty-nine features were presented in all. Fred Schepisi’s The Devil’s Playground and Philippe Mora’s Mad Dog Morgan represented Australia. The other titles were: Claude Chabrol’s A Way to Pleasure, Bertrand Tavernier’s The Judge and the Assassin, Claude Sautet’s Vincent, François, Paul and the Others and Jacques Doilion’s Touched in the Head (all France); Andrzej Wajda’s Land of Promise, Walerian Borowczyk’s Story of Sin and Krszyztof Zanussi’s The Balance (all Poland – Zanussi attended the Festival); Theodor Angelopoulos’ The Travelling Players (Greece); Satyajit Ray’s The Middle Man and Mani Kaul’s Duvidha (both India); Anja Breien’s Wives and Per Blom’s Mother’s House (both Norway); Stig Björkmann’s The White Wall and Lasse Hallström’s A Lover and His Lass (both Sweden); Peter Refn’s Violets Are Blue (Denmark); Jörn Donner’s Three Scenes with lngmar Bergman (Finland); Volker Schlöndorff’s Lost Honour of Katharina Blum; Wim Wenders’ Wrong Movement and Kings of the Road, and Fassbinder’s Mother Kusters’ Trip to Heaven (all West Germany); Ben Lewin’s Welcome to Britain and Nicolas Roeg’s The Man who Fell to Earth (both UK); Marta Meszaros’ Adoption (Hungary); Lautaro Murua’s La Raulito (Argentina); Don Shebib’s Second Wind; Robin Spry’s Action and Michel Audy’s The House that Hides the Town (all Canada); Nana Mchledze’s The First Swallow (the director attended), Sergei Mikaelyan’s The Bonus and Sergei Yutkevich’s Mayakovsky Laughs (all USSR); Frederick Wiseman’s Welfare, Karen Arthur’s Legacy and Emile de Antonio’s Underground (all USA); Jose-Luis Borau’s Poachers (Spain); the omnibus film Melancholy Tales and Bert Haanstra’s Dr. Pulder is Sowing Poppies (both Netherlands); Jean-Jacques Andrien’s The Son of Amr is Dead (Belgium); Tatsumi Kumashiro’s Street of Joy (Japan); Bahram Beiza’i’s The Stranger and the Fog (Iran); and Ousmane Sembene’s Xala (Senegal).

Shorts included : Caroline Leaf’s The Owl Who Married a Goose, Geoffrey Jones’ Locomotion, Michael Rubbo’s Waiting for Fidel, Terry Gilliam’s Miracle of Flight, Zlatko Grgic’s Who Are We?, Bruce Petty’s Leisure, Bob Godfrey’s Great, Phillip Noyce’s God Knows Why But It Works, Murray Grigor’s Blast!, Robin Lehman’s See and Hotspot and Nicholas Broomfield’s Behind the Rent Strike.