(translated with google and fixed by Ernesto)

for this edition the spotlight is focused more than ever on career prizes. To receive them are two real icons of cinema: Julie Andrews and Pedro Almodóvar. Personalities who, with their work, have succeeded in making the spectators dream and, at the same time, creating an edge, delivering – with irony and great talent – themes such as sexual identity and the freedom not to live hidden or chained. Andrews – a portentous voice of four octaves and many awards, including an Oscar, five Gloden Globes, three Grammys, two Emmys and two Baftas – said she was “very honoured to have been chosen for the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. The Venice Film Festival has long been considered one of the most respected international festivals. I thank La Biennale for this recognition of my work, and I look forward to visiting this wonderful city on such a special occasion “. If somebody who was awarded the title of Dame Commander of the British Empire by Her Majesty Elizabeth II, becoming Kennedy Center Honoree, and was celebrated with the Screen Actors Guild Award for Lifetime Achievement, says something like this then there is good reason to believe it. It will therefore be exciting to see this wonderful performer who begun on the stages of the music hall in London arriving on the stage of the Palazzo del Cinema at the Lido. Starting from the very beginning of her career, moving to Broadway and being consecrated by films like Mary Poppins, All together passionately and Victor Victoria.

Three milestones of cinema, but also three films on the acceptance of self, which push people to take charge of their own existence. Andrews has become, in some way, a symbol of non-conformism: the practically perfect nanny in every respect, with a touch of magic, in contrast with the bourgeois respectability of the head of the Banks family in Mary Poppins; then the novice Maria who questions her vocation after a period as housekeeper in the Von Trapp house, falling in love with the father of the children she takes care of; finally the soprano Victoria Grant who, in order to work, turns into Count Victor Grazinski, a gay artiste who performs en travesti.

A woman pretending to be a man who does shows in women’s clothes. A hilarious game of misunderstandings and disguises that has made it an icon of the lgbtq community. The actress herself, now also the author of best sellers like The Very Fairy Princess (written with her daughter Emma) and director of shows of the caliber of My Fair Lady, calls herself a strange mix: symbol of gay movements (of which she is a strong supporter) and beloved by grandmothers and their grandchildren. She is surely a unique character who, with her sweet smile and a handful of songs left in the collective imagination (like A Spoonful of sugar, Supercalifragilistichespiralidoso, Cam-caminì, Do Re Mi and Edelweiss) has been able to launch messages capable of breaking up the antediluvian vision of a one-way world.

If on the one hand we have the candid look of a tough woman, actress of dreamlike films, on the other, here is Pedro Almodóvar, director-symbol of the transgressive Madrid movida. (…)

We should thank Almodóvar because he has exposed hidden realities, he has spoken publicly and with joy of homosexuality, changing the somewhat gray image that the society, before then, had. He and Julie Andrews are more alike than one might think. Artists whose ideas go in the same direction and which will be moving to see at the Lido, precisely in the year in which the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall movements is celebrated. An awarding ceremony which, under this rainbow light, closes a circle and takes on a completely different flavor.

Original posted 

Special Thank you to Ernesto!!