Dive & Madrine, the exhibition at the Venice Film Festival 2024, celebrated women between cinema and fashion

The photo exhibition was set up from 28 August to 7 September in the lobby of the Hotel Excelsior, the heart of the festival.

Eight Divas and Eight Godmothers at the Venice Film Festival 2024

The setting for Weber's shots is Cinecittà, an iconic place and symbol of Italian cinema in the world, a fulcrum of history and contemporaneity that has welcomed the protagonists inside its legendary theatres where the masters of cinema have shot - and are still shooting - their works, in its large open-air sets, in its park and in its exhibition facilities.

In the exhibition Dive & Madrine eight divas of the past reinterpreted by eight contemporary actresses who have played the role of godmothers in past editions of the Venice Film Festival and who here also become protagonists thanks to the clothes of important Italian fashion houses: Giorgio Armani, Armani Privè, Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferragamo, Alberta Ferretti, Versace and N21 by Alessandro dell'Acqua. The photographic fil rouge - like a real generational baton passing - thus links Silvana Mangano to Kasia Smutniak, Sophia Loren to Caterina Murino, Alida Valli to Sonia Bergamasco, Stefania Sandrelli to Rocio Morales, Claudia Cardinale to Serena Rossi, Virna Lisi to Vittoria Puccini, Mariangela Melato to Anna Foglietta and Monica Vitti to Sveva Alviti.

In this photographic exhibition - curated by the Undersecretary for Culture Lucia Borgonzoni and Chiara Sbarigia, President of Cinecittà, with project coordination by Marvi De Angelis of the Marver agency - the eternal light of our cinema shines on eight Italian divas of the past and is reflected on as many new stars of today. A feminine dialogue which, starting from the shots of the Archivio Luce, and other historical archives, arrives in the lens of Uli Weber's camera and celebrates the ever virtuous intertwining of fashion, costume and cinema.

Uli Weber is a great portraitist, and like every great portraitist he is also a very fine psychologist who was able to bring out an essential note of all eight protagonists and render it in the shots in the exhibition.

Uli Weber's photos flank and reinterpret in this exhibition the historical images of the great archives such as the Luce archives, which are not an inert repository of visual documents.

From 1924 to the present day, the Archives contain a century of moving images and photos that tell the story of our culture. Moreover, the Archivio Luce is not an inert repository of historical images but an organism in continuous transformation.

A special thanks to Uli Weber and Massimo Pelliciari of Fotorent for involving Studio Rufus in this exciting and articulated project.