Some of the hottest tickets at the Venice film festival are not for the screening rooms but for the after-parties, such as the one thrown Thursday night by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's sons.Saadi Gadhafi and Mutassim Gadhafi reportedly want Libya to be involved financially in the construction of a new palace to host the annual movie festival.
Rapper 50 Cent entertained the 400 or so guests at the gala, which was promoting the Gadhafis' humanitarian project for children in Niger, organizers say.
The Venice daily Il Gazzettino's Web site reported that the Gadhafi brothers were trying to seal a deal with Davide Croff, president of the Venice Biennale, which includes the film festival.
Croff is keen on redoing the crowded Venice Lido area where the films are screened, and earlier this year, an Italian architectural company was chosen in an international competition to build the New Palace of Cinema.
The revamped festival site will be made available to host conferences and other events besides the late summer cinema appointment, which awards the Golden Lion to the best film in competition.
A spokesman for the Biennale, Paolo Lughi, says there have been no talks with the Libyans over possible financial involvement in the cinema complex, which would overhaul the current site, which includes a former casino.
"We know absolutely nothing about it," says Lughi, who adds that Croff had planned to drop by the private party, which was held at the Westin Excelsior hotel on the Lido beachfront.
A lawyer for Saadi Gadhafi, Giovanni Guaglianone, says he did not know anything about the reported business interest in the cinema project.
The Libyan Embassy in Rome was closed the day of the party and could not be reached for comment.
The Libyans already have a foothold in Italy's soccer world. Saadi Gadhafi plays for a major-league Italian soccer team. Also, the Libyan holding company Lafico is a minority shareholder in Juventus, the Turin soccer team whose majority shareholder is the holding company of the Agnellis, the Fiat auto dynasty family.
The Venice film festival has a Libyan historical tie. Among the founding fathers in the early 1930s was Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, whose title reflects the name of a Libyan city.
The count was an Italian financier who served as governor of Tripolitania in 1920s during Italian occupation of the North African desert nation.
Source: AFP
