Entitled Biennale College Cinema – Prospects and Perspectives, the international panel organised by the 71st Venice International Film Festival and moderated by Peter Cowie, will be held on the Lido Wednesday 3 September 2014 at 3:00 pm in the Press Conference Room, on the third floor of the Palazzo del Casinò.

“Last year at this time we were startled to find that the first three features commissioned by the Biennale College Cinema committee had proved to be extremely interesting,” notes moderator Peter Cowie (film historian and former Int’l Publishing Director of Variety). “Each film had its fans, travelled to film festivals, and earned excellent critics. The Biennale College Cinema scheme is exciting chiefly because it is in essence a workshop – a workshop that places the focus squarely on two essential themes: the making of low-budget films in a period of global recession, and the need to find youthful auteurs if the cinema is to be reinvigorated.”

Panellists will include the directors and/or producers of the three films, and also:

Peter Cowie
In 1963, Peter Cowie launched the annual International Film Guide, which appeared under his editorship for 40 years. He has written more than 30 books about film, including biographies of Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman and Francis Ford Coppola, studies of Scandinavian film and, more recently, Akira Kurosawa. Among the publications he has written articles for are The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, the London Sunday Times, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Expressen, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, The Nation, and Sight and Sound. He was International Publishing Director of Variety from 1993 to 2000, and Regents’ Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. Cowie has contributed more than a dozen commentaries for Criterion DVD’s.

Richard Corliss, author and chief film reviewer at Time Magazine (New York)
Richard Corliss achieved renown as the editor of the influential magazine Film Comment, before being named as film critic for Time magazine, a role he continues to fill. He is especially admired for his single-minded efforts to give proper credit to the screenwriter in Hollywood history, first in his anthology, Hollywood Screenwriters, and then in an even more brilliant book, Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema 1927-1973.

Ann Hornaday, chief movie critic at The Washington Post (Washington D.C.)
She grew up in Des Moines, Iowa and graduated cum laude with a degree in Government from Smith College. After working at Ms. magazine as a researcher and editorial assistant, she became a freelance writer in New York City, where she eventually began to write about movies for the New York Times Arts & Leisure section and other publications. In 1995 she became the movie critic at the Austin American-Statesman in Austin, Texas, where she stayed for two years before moving to Baltimore to be the movie critic at the Baltimore Sun. She left the Sun in 2000 and began working at the Washington Post in 2002. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2008.

Mick LaSalle, chief film reviewer Hearst Newspapers
(San Francisco)
Mick LaSalle is film critic for The San Francisco Chronicle and the author of two excellent and well-received books on pre-Hays Code Hollywood, as well as the recent study of French actresses, The Beauty of the Real. He serves as film critic for the Hearst Newspaper chain. Mick LaSalle wrote and co-produced the Turner Classic Movies documentary, Complicated Women, based on his book. For several years he taught a film course at the University of California in Berkeley and now teaches film at Stanford University.

Savina Neirotti, Director of the TorinoFilmLab and the Head of Program for the Biennale College Cinema
Born in Genova, she graduated in Philosophy and completed the first year of Master in Aesthetics at the University of Pennsylvania. After returning to Italy, she became Head of the Press and Communication Office of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, where she was also in charge of the Educational Department. In the same years she founded Scuola Holden in Torino together with Alessandro Baricco. She is Director of Scuola Holden’s Master in Narration Techniques, and she supervises all the school activities, focusing on the international contacts. In the last ten years Savina has written articles and interviews on narration and classical music, book reviews and film reviews for Italian and international newspapers. She has been in charge of Script&Pitch Workshops since 2005, and TorinoFilmLab since 2008.

Stephanie Zacharek, principal film writer at The Village Voice in New York
An American film and music critic, her writing on books and pop culture has also appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly and Sight and Sound, among others. She is a member of the National Society of Film Critics. Her work was featured in the anthology, American Movie Critics, edited by Philip Lopate in 2006, Prior to her appointment at the Voice, she served as chief film critic at Movieline.com, and for several years contributed all manner of pieces to Salon.com.