The President of the Venice Biennale, Davide Croff, has asked two great image masters, Dante Ferretti and Matteo Thun, to make some significant changes to the facade of the historical Palazzo del Cinema on the Venice Lido. The building will greet both the general public and the stars with a completely new look for the 61st Venice Film Festival (1-11 September 2004), run by Marco Müller for the first time this year.

Dante Ferretti has been set designer for great Italian (Fellini, Ferreri, Pasolini) and international directors. Most notably he has worked with Martin Scorsese on seven films, the latest of which, after Gangs of New York, is the yet to be released The Aviator. He has also been asked for his own special contribution.

"Davide Croff asked me to provide the intitial thrust towards revamping the Palazzo del Cinema's image", says Ferretti, "and to create a major change on the visual impact of the building's exterior: its transformation acts as a sign for what's ahead in the coming years. I used the Festival's glorious past as a springboard to quickly pass on to a future that holds something new. The 'screened' façade designed by Matteo Thun represents a transition period: therefore I chose to symbolically bring outside the history of film that until now has been safeguarded within the Palazzo walls and sealed with the Golden Lion. That's why I envisaged a labyrinth of stems, and on each stem a Lion, in memory of those that have been awarded in previous years."

Thus there will be 60 stems of various heights (the highest measuring 5.5 metres) outside the Palazzo, placed in checkerboard fashion on a platform measuring 63 metres long. A glass resin Lion covered in glossy and prematurely aged gold leaf will be placed on each stem, almost two metres high. The steel-cornered white stems are in plastic and have an internal system that lights them up at night. The 43-metre long catwalk with its classic red carpet on which the stars make their entrance will be opposite the platform.

The architect Matteo Thun (who studied at the Salzburg Academy with Oskar Kokoschka and who established the Memphis design group with Ettore Sottsass in 1980) is responsible for the graphics and layout of the 61st Festival. The façade of the Palazzo del Cinema will be covered by a big screen, 11 metres high, projecting images that aim to recreate, beginning with the official festival poster, "new and unexpected reflections on the lagoon, a sea of light and colour in which all the energy of the eastern city is concentrated."