Milan, 31 August 2023 – From 1 September 2023, Fondazione Prada’s movie theatre, Cinema Godard, relaunches its proposal that explores the present and past movie landscape like an open and ever-changing festival. International directors Wes Anderson, Werner Herzog and Rebecca Zlotowski will participate in three talks to inaugurate the new film season, curated by Paolo Moretti. The show “Wes Anderson – Asteroid City: Exhibition”, on view at Fondazione Prada’s Milan venue from 23 September 2023 to 7 January 2024, will be unveiled on the occasion of the Italian premiere of the latest film by the American filmmaker.

As stated by Miuccia Prada, “Cinema is a laboratory for new ideas and a space of cultural education—for this reason, we have decided to name our movie theatre after Jean-Luc Godard. His work’s experimental and visionary power is a constant inspiration to renew our foundation’s commitment to spread cinematographic and visual languages and explore emerging narrative forms by activating a place where people have the opportunity to reflect on the world and their lives.”

The new name of Fondazione Prada’s Cinema pays tribute to one of the most experimental and innovative directors in world cinematography, whose work has influenced generations of cinephiles, artists and spectators. Cinema Godard is strengthening the link between the Franco-Swiss director and Fondazione Prada, for whom he conceived and realized “Le Studio d’Orphée” and “Accent-sœur”, his only permanent installations open to the public.

From February to December 2023, Fondazione Prada devotes a retrospective to Godard, examining his vast and complex filmography and presenting in September British

Sounds (1970), Pravda (1970), Le vent d’est (1970) and Lotte in Italia (1971) on the big screen.

Talks with directors Rebecca Zlotowski, Werner Herzog, and Wes Anderson

On Saturday, 16 September, at 8.30 pm, French director and screenwriter Rebecca Zlotowski will be the focus of a conversation on her entire work, from her debut film Belle épine (Dear Prudence, 2010), which revealed Léa Seydoux and was selected at La Semaine de la Critique in Cannes, to the more recent Les enfants des autres (Other People’s Children, 2022), which was presented in competition at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

On Sunday, 17 September, at 8 pm, German director and writer Werner Herzog will be the protagonist of a meeting with the public. On this occasion, he will present his latest film, The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022), dedicated to the well-known French volcanologists and filmmakers and distributed in Italian theatres by I Wonder Pictures,

and the Italian premiere of Theater of Thought (2022), which explores the mystery of the human brain between neuroscientific and technological discoveries and their ethical and philosophical implications. In addition to Herzog’s two unreleased films, a selection of his documentary works from the 2000s onward will be presented, many of which have never been released theatrically in Italy.

On Friday, 22 September at 8.30 pm, the Italian premiere of Asteroid City (2023), Wes Anderson’s latest work presented in the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and distributed by Universal Pictures International Italy from 28 September in the Italian movie theatres, will be accompanied by a live discussion with the American director.

“Wes Anderson – Asteroid City: Exhibition”

On the occasion of the Italian theatrical release of Asteroid City, Fondazione Prada, in collaboration with Universal Pictures International Italy, will present “Wes Anderson – Asteroid City: Exhibition” in Milan from 23 September 2023 to 7 January 2024, following its first London version. Hosted in Fondazione Prada’s Nord gallery, the project will include a selection of original sets, props, miniatures, costumes and artwork featured in this movie. The immersive installations will transport audiences into the creative universe of Anderson’s eleventh feature film, which takes place in 1955 in a fictional American desert town. It narrates a convention of young astronomers and space cadets, bringing together students and parents from across the country and spectacularly disrupted by mysterious events that will change the world. Two years after The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson returns to the big screen with a film that mixes science fiction with the spirit of Broadway and in which we find the stylistic features that have established the American auteur’s international reputation. The film, of extraordinary plastic strength and compositional sophistication, boasts a stellar ensemble cast featuring, among others, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, and Hope Davis. Asteroid City ironically evokes collective (the atomic bomb) and individual (loneliness) fears and further develops the American director’s original and refined poetics.

Wes Anderson and Fondazione Prada have built a strong relationship over the years. In 2015, for the Milan venue, he designed the Bar Luce that recreates the atmosphere of a typical Milanese café by freely referring to two masterpieces of Italian Neorealism: Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano, 1951) by Vittorio De Sica and Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli, 1960) by Luchino Visconti. The architectural and decorative elements of Bar Luce are reminiscent of Italian popular culture and aesthetics from the 1950s and 1960s echoing artistic decisions Anderson made for his short film Castello Cavalcanti produced by Prada in 2013. In 2017 Anderson, with Juman Malouf, curated “Il sarcofago di Spitzmaus e altri tesori” (Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and Other Treasures), an exhibition project organized by Fondazione Prada in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Cinema Godard’s September Program

The intense monthly calendar of Cinema Godard’s screenings and talks follows different programming lines that suggest possible paths and trajectories to viewers.

The #Soggettiva screenings investigate the work of key authors in the contemporary film scene. This month’s two protagonists are Werner Herzog and Rebecca Zlotowski, whose filmographies will be analyzed through a selection of their works.

#Nocturna explores the universe of genre cinema with the collaboration of Nocturno magazine. The Italian premiere of the Australian indie horror film Talk to Me (2022) will be shown on Saturday, 23 September, at 9.30 pm. Directed by brothers Danny and Michael Philippou and screened at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival, the film has garnered praise from Jordan Peele, Stephen King, Peter Jackson and Ari Aster.

#Sonic reveals the many connections between music and moving images. Kathryn Ferguson’s Nothing Compares (2022) is a documentary, winner of two British Independent Film Awards, about the life and career of recently deceased singer Sinead O’Connor.

#Classici presents restored versions of films that have shaped film history and nurtured the collective imagination. September program features David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Hawks and the Sparrows (Uccellacci e Uccellini, 1966), Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934), Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano, 1951) and Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, 1920).

#Selezione features some of the most interesting international releases of the current film season such as Elie Grappe’s Olga (2021), Charlotte Le Bon’s Falcon Lake (2022), Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s The Oath of Pamfir (Pamfir, 2022), Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N. (2022), Aga Woszczynska’s Silent Land (Cicha ziemia, 2021) and Nicolas Pariser’s The Green Perfume (Le parfum vert, 2022).

Fondazione Prada and Cinema

Over the past two decades, Fondazione Prada has supported several film-related activities creating unexpected connections between moving images, the visual arts, and technology. Since 2015, its cinema program has brought together a wide range of genres, productions, and periods, generating a dialogue with a diverse audience. With its new program, started in February 2023 and curated by Paolo Moretti, Fondazione Prada aimed at enhancing the broad spectrum of film creation, both contemporary and less recent, in all its richness and diversity, expanding and engaging its audience.

From February to June 2023, the Fondazione’s film program featured an extensive series of meetings with directors and artists like Yuri Ancarani, Jaume Balagueró, Lamberto Bava, Jonas Carpignano, Flatform, Joanna Hogg, Elena López Riera, Pietro Marcello, Diego Marcon, Lucrecia Martel, Sergio Martino, Gianfranco Rosi, Céline Sciamma, Erige Sehiri, and Albert Serra, who participated in person in captivating discussions and debates with the audience. Many partnerships were also established with institutions, festivals, and film publications such as CSC – Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, FESCAAAL – Festival of African, Asian and Latin American Cinema in Milan, MiX International Festival of LGBTQ+ Cinema and Queer Culture in Milan, Filmmaker Festival and the magazine Nocturno.