The world-renowned Venice Film Festival celebrates its 75th birthday next year with a special prize and a homage to spaghetti Westerns.
Although next year's event will only be the 64th edition of the festival, it was first staged in 1932, as part of the Venice Biennial of contemporary art.
"Venice was the first event of its kind and has become the model for every other cinema festival around the world," said Biennial President Davide Croff, explaining the festivities planned for next year.
The highlight will be a special one-off 'Golden Lion 75' award, handed out to a cinematic legend, said Croff.
"The prize will go to a figure from the world of cinema who best expresses the authority and history of the Venice Film Festival," he explained.
The prize, decided during a meeting of the festival's board of directors, is planned in addition to, rather than instead of, the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award.
The board also decided to fete Italian cinema with a celebration of the country's legendary 'spaghetti Westerns'.
The genre emerged in the 1960s, when Italian studios started producing low-budget Westerns, breaking with Hollywood's traditional approach.
Although initially in Italian, they soon switched to English, and are now considered pivotal in having shaped modern concepts of Western films around the world.
Sergio Leone's Man With No Name trilogy became the archetype for the genre, starring Clint Eastwood, a little-known American TV actor at the time. The final film in the trilogy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), is among the best-known Westerns ever made.
In addition to screening a selection of mainstream and lesser-known Westerns, a variety of events will be staged for the run-up to the festival, with "spaghetti Western nights" planned for Venice, Milan and Rome over the summer.
Discussing the events scheduled for Venice's 75th birthday, festival director Marco Muller highlighted the continuing important influence of spaghetti Westerns in modern cinema.
Quentin Tarantino, John Woo, Martin Scorsese and Johnnie To are just some of the directors that have paid homage to the genre, he said.
The 2007 festival will feature a selection of 60 movies, including 20 competing for the event's top Golden Lion prize.
It will be held on the Venice lido between August 29 and September 8.
