Venice, Sep 6 - Veteran actor Al Pacino has been honoured at the Venice Film Festival for his work as a moviemaker.

Pacino is in Venice to promote his new directorial project "Wilde Salome", a part-documentary about writer-poet Oscar Wilde and part-movie adaptation of his play "Salome".

Acclaiming Mani Ratnam as the leading innovators in modern Indian cinema, the Venice International Film Festival has decided to honor the director of "Raavan" with the 2010 Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award.

The award given in association with Swiss watch-maker Jaeger-LeCoultre awarded other major world filmproducers such as Takeshi Kitano, Abbas Kiarostami, Agnes Varda and Sylvester Stallone in recent years.

Venice - The European Central Bank (ECB) meets Thursday amid concerns that the strong performance of the euro could place at risk the fragile economic recovery that has been taking shape across Europe.

Holding one of its regular out-of-town meetings in Venice, the Frankfurt-based ECB is widely expected to keep interest rates on hold at an historic low of 1 per cent and to leave in place the so-called unconventional measures it has launched to shore up market confidence.

Venice, Italy - Lebanon, a war drama by Israeli director Samuel Maoz, on Saturday won the Golden Lion for best film at the Venice Film Festival.

The film is set during the first day of Israel's 1982 conflict in Lebanon. It is shot from the perspective of soldiers holed up in a tank - a claustrophobic experience audiences are made to share by the way the film is shot.

Venice, Italy  - The film Lola by Filipino director Brillante Mendoza screened Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, becoming the second "surprise selection" to be included by organizers in this year's competition.

Earlier this week German director Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done?" was unveiled as the first "surprise" film to join the 23 previously announced films competing for the Golden Lion prize.

Lola, or Grandmother, tells the story of two women who bear the consequences of a crime involving their respective grandsons - one man the victim the other the suspect.

Venice, Italy  - Leftwing Italian director Michele Placido lost his temper at the Venice Film Festival Wednesday when quizzed over why his film of the 1968 student revolts was part funded by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's media empire.

Placido, during a press conference to present Il Grande Sogno - a semi-autobiographical homage to the leftist student revolts of 1968 - criticised Berlusconi's government for cutting funds to the performing arts.

Venice, Italy  - At one point during a news conference with Michael Moore at the Venice Film Festival, it was alleged that in some countries, distributors of his latest film were charging journalists hefty fees for the privilege of interviewing him.

The US director, whose assault on corporate greed Capitalism: A Love Story, has made waves since its first screening at the festival, offered a poignant response.

Venice, Italy  - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez received Monday a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival when he attended a gala screening of Oliver Stone's South of the Border.

The leftist Latin American leader's arrived in the lagoon city to pay homage to Stone's documentary which in part deals with the alleged demonizing of Chavez by the US media and is screening out-of-competition at the festival.

Chavez acknowledged the audience's applause with waving arms before taking up a seat next to Stone in the Sala Grande main hall of the film festival's Palazzo del Cinema venue.

Venice, Italy - The Venice Film Festival became even more politically charged Monday when organizers announced the arrival later in the day of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The leftist Latin American leader is scheduled to attend an evening gala screening of Oliver Stone's South of the Border, a documentary dealing with the alleged demonizing of Chavez by the US media.

Stone on Monday praised Chavez, whom he interviews extensively in the film, and "all the wonderful change" which has occurred in Venezuela.

Venice, Italy - While researching an idea for a movie, German director Werner Herzog visited a US trailer-park to interview a man who spent eight years in a mental asylum for killing his mother with an antique sabre.

"I could tell he was still insane and dangerous," the legendary director said.

Then something on the wall of the man's decrepit trailer sent a chill down his spine: a poster of his own film, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, displayed together with a candle and a crucifix.

Venice, Italy - Controversial US filmmaker Michael Moore was set Saturday to bring his highly anticipated documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, to the Venice Film, Festival.

Moore has revealed little of the film ahead of its world premier in the Italian lagoon city, where it is competing for the festival's Golden Lion top prize.

But a trailer posted on the Youtube internet channel suggest it will deliver Moore's brand of brash, in your-face denunciation of what he believes to be wrong with US society

Venice, Italy - Werner Herzog presented Friday his remake of the film Bad Lieutenant at the Venice Film Festival and suggested a feud with Abel Ferrara, who directed the original 1997 version of the film, could end "over a glass of whisky."

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a noir thriller starring Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendes, had spectators clapping loudly during a screening in Venice where it is competing for the top Golden Lion award.

Venice, Italy - The granddaughter of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini wants to stop the screening of a film which denounces the xenophobic treatment of immigrants in Italy newsreports said Friday.

Alessandra Mussolini is disparagingly referred to as a "sow" in the film.

Mussolini is seeking legal damages and possibly the seizure of the Romanian film, Francesca, which screened at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

Venice, Italy  - This year's Venice Film Festival aims to pack some punch, and not just because the screen's most famous boxer stands to pick up one of the awards.

Sylvester Stallone is to receive the 2009 Glory to the Filmmaker Award for a career catalogue featuring the Rocky blockbuster franchises.

It would seem an odd choice for Venice, which has a reputation for reserving most of the honours to less commercial cinema.

Venice, Italy - The Venice Film Festival is to honour with a filmmaker's award, screen star Sylvester Stallone, best known for his roles in the action blockbuster Rocky and Rambo films, organizers said Wednesday.

Stallone is set to pick up the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award on September 12 during the closing ceremony of this year's edition of the Venice Film Festival which starts September 2.

Venice, Italy - The body of a 67-year-old Japanese tourist was recovered Wednesday from the water in Venice after what is believed to have been a drowning accident, news reports said.

The man, identified by the ANSA news agency as Ohta Tadayuki, apparently slipped and fell near the hotel where he was staying together with a group of other Japanese tourists.

Gondoliers alerted authorities after spotting Tadayuki's body floating in the basin near the lagoon city's central St Mark's Square, the report said. (dpa)

Venice, Italy - A tourist who urinated in one of Venice's famous canals has received a fine after being caught in the act by the Italian lagoon city's mayor, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

"I saw a gentleman who was peeing in the canal, and as soon as I realized he was not Italian, I asked him if he would dare do such a thing in his own living room," Mayor Massimo Cacciari told the Venice-based daily Il Gazzettino.

Venice, Italy - A porn industry trade fair featuring striptease shows and "erotic massage booths," was scheduled to open Thursday near Venice, despite attempts by the Italian lagoon city's mayor to ban it.

A court order on Wednesday overturned a townhall ordinance prohibiting the four-day "Erotica Tour Millennium," from being held in the Marghera industrial district.

Centre-left Mayor Massimo Cacciari has warned of the "potential danger," posed by the fair being held in an area which is "already very degraded."

Venice  - A stylish new superliner with 225 luxury suites, a hilly, nine-hole golf putting course and a private diamond showroom has taken to the waves off the Italian city of Venice.

The 198-metre cruiser was built at the T Mariotti yard in Genoa and is the first of three 450-passenger vessels ordered by the Seabourn line for delivery by 2011. It is also the first major new luxury cruise ship to make its debut since 2003. The Odyssey weighs in at 32,000 gross tons.

Venice, Italy  - The skeleton of woman who was probably believed to have been a vampire when she died in the Middle Ages has been uncovered in Venice, news agency reported Friday.

Archaeologists made the find on Lazzaretto Nuovo, one of the hundreds of islands that make up the lagoon city, the ANSA news agency reported.

A brick found lodged in the skeleton's mouth suggests the woman's body was "staked", University of Florence expert Matteo Borrini said.