Fondazione Prada Introduces 1.5 Million-euro Film Fund
MILAN — While tariffs looming over the film industry have led the conversation on the opening day of the Cannes Film Festival, Miuccia Prada has quietly upped the ante of her commitment and support to the seventh art.
On Wednesday, Fondazione Prada revealed the creation of the Fondazione Prada Film Fund, a 1.5-million-euro yearly effort aimed at supporting independent cinema and works of high artistic value, further enhancing the cultural institution's 20-year commitment to the field.
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'Cinema is for us a laboratory for new ideas and a space of cultural education. For this reason, we have decided to actively contribute to the realization of new works and to the support of auteur cinema,' Prada, who is president and director of the foundation, said in a statement. 'For over 20 years, the Fondazione has been investigating these languages in different ways, thus advocating a free, demanding and visionary idea of cinema. Through this fund we intend to deepen and broaden a dialogue with creation and contemporary experimentation.'
The fund will debut in the fall via a call for entries. Each year, a jury will select 10 to 12 feature films with no geographical or genre restriction, basing its picks on criteria including quality, originality and vision.
The jury will decide the specific financing for each movie selected, addressing films in three different phases such as development, production and post-production. The ultimate goal is to support heterogeneous works in terms of language, production scale and artistic vision to contribute to the plurality and vitality of contemporary cinema.
The project has been developed by Paolo Moretti, curator of Fondazione Prada's Cinema Godard program, director of the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival from 2018 to 2022, head of the cinema department at ECAL — or École cantonale d'art de Lausanne — and director of Cinémas du Grütli in Geneva. He collaborated with Rebecca De Pas, a member of the selection committee at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and codirector of FiDLab — an international coproduction platform — from 2009 to 2019.
This is the latest initiative in a long streak of film-related projects the cultural institution has launched to explore the art of filmmaking tracing back to the early 2000s. For instance, from 2003 to 2005, Fondazione Prada partnered with the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, presenting the preview of a film selection in New York and Milan, such as Chinese director Wong Kar-wai's feature film '2046.'
From 2004 to 2006, in collaboration with the Venice Biennale, the foundation launched a film recovery and restoration program, involving a selection of forgotten or misunderstood Italian genre films shot between the '50s and the '70s; Chinese works distributed before the 1949 Revolution; rare films belonging to Japanese popular production, and Soviet musical comedy films from the 1930s to the '70s.
Other projects through the years have ranged from Francesco Vezzoli's 'Trilogia della Morte' video installations inspired by two works by Pier Paolo Pasolini and presented in Venice and Milan to Alejandro G. Iñárritu's 'Flesh, Mind and Spirit' in 2009, featuring a selection of films that marked the director's education and artistic vision. This initiative paved the way for the 'Soggettiva' series of movie selections that has involved filmmakers such as Pedro Almodóvar, Danny Boyle and Ava DuVernay and artists such as John Baldessari, Damien Hirst, Goshka Macuga and Luc Tuymans, to name a few.
The Fondazione Prada outpost in Milan itself is filled with movie references, starting from its highly Instagrammed café Bar Luce, designed by Wes Anderson and referencing two masterpieces of Italian Neorealism like Vittorio De Sica's 1951 film 'Miracle in Milan' and Luchino Visconti's 1960 movie ' Rocco and His Brothers.'
In 2018, the cultural institution's Milan location launched a regular screening program in its movie theater, mixing classics, experimental works, previews and rare and restored movies.
Masterclasses and public meetings with established and emerging figures on the international film scene — including Anderson and Almodóvar, as well as the likes of Spike Lee, Luca Guadagnino, Dario Argento, Alfonso Cuarón, Joanna Hogg and Xavier Dolan, to name a few — further contributed to drawing crowds to the movie theater.
As reported, in 2023 Fondazione Prada renamed the theater Cinema Godard to pay permanent tribute to the French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard. The move followed in the footsteps of Fondazione Prada becoming the only international institution to host two permanent projects by the late Franco Swiss director. Both were specifically conceived for the Milan venue and personally supervised by the filmmaker during their installation in 2019.
For 'Le Studio d'Orphée,' Godard relocated his atelier and recording and editing studio to Fondazione Prada, setting a living and working space bringing together the original technical equipment used for his last films from 2010 to 2019, as well as furniture, books, paintings and other personal items from his studio home in Rolle, Switzerland. Here, visitors have the opportunity of attending the screening of his 2018 feature film 'Le Livre d'image' in the physical place where it was created.
For the elevator of Fondazione Prada's Torre tower, Godard conceived 'Accent-soeur,' an audio installation combining the soundtrack of 'Histoire(s) du cinema,' an eight-part video project the director began in 1988 and completed in 1998 that narrates the complex history of 'the seventh art.'
Currently, American director, writer and visual artist Miranda July's research project 'A Kind of Language' is on display at Fondazione Prada's Osservatorio outpost in Milan's landmark Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping arcade. Running until Sept. 8, the exhibition investigates the creative process that precedes a film's realization, showcasing storyboards and other preparatory materials.
Up next is an immersive exhibition conceived by Iñárritu that will open Sept. 18 and run through Feb. 26, 2026, and which will delve into the cultural and cinematographic dimension of the director's first feature film 'Amores Perros,' released in 2000.
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22 Wild Facts About Old Hollywood Celebrities
Shirley Temple was so popular and talented that there was a conspiracy theory she was not a child at all, but an adult with dwarfism. In fact, she was investigated by the Vatican, who sent a priest to confirm she was in fact a child — which they were, apparently, able to do. Many celebrities from the '40s were actually spies during World War II, including Josephine Baker. She lived in Nazi-occupied France and would flirt with Nazi officials and get them tispy until they divulged military secrets, then write the secrets down on invisible ink and stash them in her underwear. MLB Baseball player Moe Berg worked for the predecessor to the CIA (the Office of Strategic Services), and once traveled to Switzerland with orders to assasinate German scientiest Werner Heisenberg if he discovered the Germans might soon be able to develop an atomic bomb. Famous chef Julia Child worked for the same organization before becoming famous, with her most notable job being to create "cakes" that were used as shark repellant. And Cary Grant reportedly spied on people in Hollywood to find Nazi sympathizers, including the German-born Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, who had married heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton. Grant actually ended up marrying the heiress after she separated from her husband. Also during WWII, Audrey Hepburn (as a child) used to perform at secret concerts in the Netherlands to raise money for the Dutch resistance, risking discovery and punishment from Germans. Oh, and BTW, guess who was allegedly a Nazi informant? Coco Chanel. During World War II, Coco Chanel was named as a Nazi informant by friend Vera Bate (who herself confessed to being a German agent). The French government arrested Chanel, who had several ties with Nazi intelligence organization Abwehr and its members. Chanel was eventually released due to a lack of evidence and possible help from friend Winston Churchill. Chanel's Nazi ties remained hidden for decades, though her "fear and hatred for Jews" was allegedly "notorious." Lucille Ball once claimed that she picked up Morse code during WWII through her lead teeth fillings. While driving home (and having previously experienced picking up music through her teeth), she began to hear a "de-de-de-de" sound. "As soon as it started fading, I stopped the car and then started backing up until it was coming in full strength. DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE DE-DE-DE-DE! I tell you, I got the hell out of there real quick. The next day I told the MGM Security Office about it, and they called the FBI or something, and sure enough, they found an underground Japanese radio station. It was somebody's gardener, but sure enough, they were spies," Ball recounted. The story sounds completely ridiculous, but it's possible it was true. There is no record of Ball talking to the FBI, or Japanese spies being found in that area at that time, but there is evidence shrapnel in someone's body, at least, can pick up AM radio waves, which suggests lead tooth fillings could work the same way. Cary Grant tried LSD over a hundred times in the 1950s as a form of psychotherapy to deal with his childhood trauma. 'After weeks of treatment came a day when I saw the light,' Grant said. 'When I broke through, I felt an immeasurably beneficial cleansing of so many needless fears and guilts. I lost all the tension that I'd been crippling myself with. First I thought of all those wasted years. Second, I said, 'Oh my God, the humanity. Please come in.'' Eartha Kitt reportedly once had a threesome with James Dean and Paul Newman. She's been quoted as having said, 'Those two beauties transported me to heaven. I never knew that lovemaking could be so beautiful," though this quote is extremely difficult to confirm. In fact, there are quite a lot of scandalous sexual secrets from Old Hollywood that can't be 100% confirmed but are still fun to hear. For instance, there's speculation that Marlon Brando and James Dean had an S&M-based relationship. Ernest Hemingway once inspected F. Scott Fitzgerald's dick in the bathroom because Fitzgerald was worried it was too small after his wife Zelda complained about it. Hemingway assured him he was "perfectly fine,' telling Fitzgerald, "You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile." In another example featuring a famous writer, James Joyce wrote some truly scandalous love letters to his wife Nora Barnacle, many of which extolled her farts. 'You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.' Agatha Christie, possibly the most famous writer in the mystery genre, once created her own mystery when she disappeared in 1926 for 11 days — and the reason is still contested. After putting her daughter to bed, Christie (who was aware her husband was having an affair), drove off and her car was later found abandoned, hanging over the edge of a pit. She had left three letters behind, one to her brother-in-law claiming she had gone to a spa, another to her secretary with "scheduling details," and a third to her husband, who never revealed what the letter said. To find her, the police dredged a lake, brought in dogs, enlisted the help of over 10,000 people, and even looked to her novels for clues. She was eventually found at a spa, like she had told her brother-in-law — except according to her husband, she no longer remembered who she was or recognized him. She had checked in under his mistress' name. In the only time Christie ever spoke of it, she admitted to considering driving into the pit her car was found by, and hitting her head — this, accompanied by the trauma of her husband cheating and her mother dying, led to memory loss. Still, people have continued to speculate it was all a publicity stunt. Steve McQueen came very close to being killed by the Manson family along with Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Steven Parent. He had been invited to Tate's house that night, and the only reason he didn't go, according to his then-wife Neile Adams, was that he 'ran into a chickie and decided to go off with her instead." According to a biography of McQueen, he had been having an affair with a blonde woman at the time, and even invited her to come to Tate's with him. However, she said "she had a better idea for just the two of them." McQueen, unlike Tate,* was on a list of targets for the Manson family. His death was planned to look like a suicide. Tate and her friends weren't specifically targeted, according to prosecutors — she just happened to live in the house once owned by music producer Terry Melcher, who had rejected proposals to make a record with Manson. Speaking of serial killer Charles Manson — he was friendly with a number of big players in Hollywood, including Dennis Wilson and Mike Love, the co-founders of the Beach Boys. In fact, Manson and his friends actually moved into Wilson's house. Wilson later allegedly told Love that he'd seen Manson murder a Black man (though this is contested), causing Wilson to break off the friendship. Marilyn Monroe's last known words were to actor Peter Lawford, who was a brother-in-law to Robert and John F. Kennedy, as he had married their sister, Pat Kennedy. He stated she ended the call with, "Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack, and say goodbye to yourself, because you're a nice guy." The Jack in reference was then-President JFK. This is noteworthy because there were longstanding rumors of an affair between JFK and Monroe, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Monroe. There are also rumors that Robert F. Kennedy visited her that night, though this was denied by the Kennedys. Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, who was there all day and night and was the one to find her dead, later claimed Robert had visited and they'd fought. When Murray found Marilyn dead around 3:30 a.m., she was reportedly holding her phone, and then-LA chief of detectives Thad Brown reportedly claimed she was found with a crumpled-up piece of paper with the number for the White House on it. Besides her connections to the Kennedys, there were other suspicious details around Monroe's death. Murray initially called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, who called the doctor who had prescribed the pills, Dr. Engelberg, before calling the police. The police did not arrive for close to an hour after Murray first saw Monroe's body. Lawford later claimed that he'd heard about her death at 1:30 a.m. The wife of Monroe's press relations manager Arthur Jacobs also later claimed that her husband had received the call that Marilyn was dead at 10:30. Natalie Wood, who starred in a number of films including West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Gypsy, also died under extremely mysterious circumstances. The 43-year-old was with her husband Robert Wagner on his boat on a weekend vacation from filming Brainstorm when she drowned. According to Wagner himself (though he initially denied this), he and Wood argued, and then he went to bed without her. The next morning, her body was found a mile away. Wood had been drinking, and it's possible her death was an accident, but she was found with bruises that could mean she was attacked. Nearby witnesses had heard a woman scream. The captain of the boat, Dennis Davern, allegedly drunkenly confessed to Wood's sister years later that he'd seen Wagner push Wood, who then fell overboard, and that Wagner refused to rescue this is unconfirmed. Wagner has denied he had anything to do with Wood's death. But I mention this one specifically for a wild Hollywood fact that not many people seem to know — Christopher Walken, Wood's Brainstorm costar, had also been on the boat that night. He had reportedly also argued with Wagner, and Wagner was (according to Davern) angry Natalie had invited him. Walken has not said much about the night beyond affirming it was an accident and that he had nothing to do with it. "I don't know what happened. She slipped and fell in the water. I was in bed then. It was a terrible thing." He also said, "The people who are convinced that there was something more to it than what came out in the investigation will never be satisfied with the truth. Because the truth is, there is nothing more to it." One of the wildest Hollywood secrets involves Loretta Young and Clark Gable. For years, there were rumors Young's adopted daughter Judy was actually her biological daughter, conceived with Clake Gable. The rumors wouldn't be proven true until Young admitted to them in her posthumous memoirs. It turned out Young had conducted an elaborate cover-up to make it seem like she had adopted the child. Loretta even reportedly had Judy's ears pinned back in an operation because they so resembled Gable's. Gable never had any role in her daughter Judy's life. Young refused to tell Judy the truth, and according to Judy's memoir, when Judy confronted her about the rumors, Young ran into the house and Young never spoke publicly about the circumstances of Judy's conception, according to her daughter-in-law, Linda Lewis, in the '90s, Young had asked her what date rape meant after hearing the term on Larry King Live. After Lewis explained, Young replied, "That's what happened between me and Clark.' On the train ride back from shooting Call of the Wild on location, Gable had allegedly snuck into Young's compartment. According to Lewis, Young didn't want Judy to know, so Lewis kept quiet until both Young and Judy were dead. Finally, we'll end with a few last examples featuring Errol Flynn, because the man had a wild life and allegedly did some wild things. First of all, he wrote in his autobiography that he once had a job castrating young sheep with his teeth. Second, Flynn once apparently showed up on the doorstep of Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, angry about something she had written about him, and began masturbating. "I began laughing, and continued laughing until he finished with a dramatic flourish all over my doorstep," Hopper reportedly told Paul Newman. "I'll say one thing for Errol. He's the only man I know who can ejaculate in front of a fully dressed woman who's laughing derisively during the entire process." And finally, David Niven claims that Flynn once brought him along to view 'the best-looking girls in L.A.'...which, as it turned out, meant parking by Hollywood High to watch the girls get out of school. He then allegedly told a police officer who questioned why they were there that he was "enjoying the scenery." What shocking old Hollywood facts do you know? Let us know in the comments!
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I feel uncomfortable as the character, giving all this information in front of a stranger. I'm telling her about my bank accounts and my everything, deals, with secrecy,'" Del Toro said. "Wes said to me, 'Well, we'll polygraph him.' And I went, 'Well, OK.' And, very quickly, he came up with this idea of a lie detector, which is a portable pocket polygraph," he added. "In 1950, it was probably the size of this building, but he made it into the pocket version." Despite the heightened reality, Anderson said this is essentially a father-daughter tale. "His whole business plan is really a mechanism for him to get back together with her," Anderson said of Zsa-zsa and Liesl. "He's acting like he's making her his successor and, really, it's more about what's going to happen between the two of them right now," Anderson added. "The business plan almost becomes like a ritual for him to be reunited with his daughter. ... In that sense, his plan goes great." 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The news only broke yesterday that Paige DeSorbo is leaving Summer House after seven seasons on the show. But the rumors are already swirling about where she might be going next. It's common knowledge that both she and housemate Lindsay Hubbard were hoping to join The Real Housewives of New York. Though EP Andy Cohen shut down Lindsay's hopes for an apple last week, could Paige still be in the running? Real Housewives of Dubai alum Chanel Ayan thinks Paige may already have her apple tucked up in bed beside her. Is Chanel spilling company secrets or is she just speculating like the rest of us? Over at the r/BravoRealHousewives community on Reddit, there's chatter going on about whether Paige will go to RHONY. Amid the conversation, Chanel posted, 'Girl you are the only person I watch out for fashion … New York Housewives will be good for you.' Has Chanel been talking to Andy? Or is she just making the assumption that the rumors are true? After all, Ubah Hassan and Chanel are cousins, so maybe the Dubai model has an inside track with RHONY. I actually think Paige would be great on RHONY. They definitely need a little spicing up after the last season. Wouldn't Paige and Sai De Silva make a pair? Reactions to the rumor were mixed among Reddit users. In response to Chanel's accidental announcement, One Redditer wrote, 'Love Paige but my housewives gotta be 40+ and delusional.' Maybe Paige is just the one to bring all those delusional New Yorkers back down to earth. And she could gift them all with her new pajama line, Daphne. Maybe Jessel Taank would find Paige's PJs more to her liking than Jenna Lyons' Christmas tree nightie. But until I hear the words from Andy's lips, I'll just leave the idea of Paige on RHONY filed away under things that make you go, 'Hmmm.' Summer House and The Real Housewives of New York are both streaming on Peacock in the US and on Hayu in the UK and Ireland. TELL US – WHAT WOULD YOU THINK ABOUT PAIGE ON RHONY? DO YOU THINK SHE'D FIT IT WITH THE GROUP? The post Is Paige DeSorbo Joining Real Housewives After Leaving Summer House? appeared first on Reality Tea.
