Events

• 1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.
• 1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe’s oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III.

People (Births)

• 1877 – Giuseppe Volpi, Italian businessman and politician, founded the Venice Film Festival (d. 1947).
• 1919 – Gillo Pontecorvo, Italian director and screenwriter (d. 2006).
• 1953 – Robert Beltran, American actor.
• 1958 – Terrence C. Carson, American actor and singer.
• 1983 – Adam Driver, American actor.

Goldwyn Pictures

Goldwyn Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company that operated from 1916 to 1924 when it was merged with two other production companies to form the major studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

It was founded on 19 November 1916, by Samuel Goldwyn, an executive at Lasky’s Feature Play Company (later Paramount Pictures), and Broadway producer brothers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, using an amalgamation of both last names to name the company.

The studio proved moderately successful, but became most famous due to its iconic Leo the Lion trademark. Although Metro was the nominal survivor, the merged studio inherited Goldwyn’s old facility in Culver City, California where it would remain until 1986. The merged studio also retained Goldwyn’s Leo the Lion logo.

Lee Shubert of The Shubert Organisation was an investor in the company.

Tele Monte Carlo

TMC (pronounced [te ɛm se]; originally short for Télé Monte-Carlo) is a Franco-Monégasque general entertainment television channel, owned by the French media holding company Groupe TF1.

The oldest private channel in Europe, TMC dates back to 1954, inaugurated by Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. Like several other European television channels, its first major broadcast was one relating to the country’s reigning dynasty, in this case the marriage of Prince Rainier III and Grace Kelly. As a result of an agreement between Prince Rainier III and the French President François Mitterrand, TMC was able to be broadcast as far west as Montpellier, France, tripling its coverage (three million potential viewers).

In 1987, the channel was carried for a few hours on M6, a French television service – which made it available to much more of France – and the channel was eventually carried by CanalSat and became available in all of France and the Indian Ocean area. The channel also won a spot on the French language digital terrestrial television scheme, demonstrating its wide appeal.

The channel was owned jointly by the TF1 Group (40%), the AB Groupe (40%) and the Government of Monaco (20%). In 2010, TF1 Group bought AB Group’s shares, In 2016, TF1 bought the Government of Monaco’s shares, and now owns 100% of the channel.

Until 1995, TMC was a member of the European Broadcasting Union as a part of Radio Monte-Carlo (RMC). Currently the Monégasque membership is held by Groupement de Radiodiffuseurs Monégasques (GRMC), a joint organisation by Monte-Carlo Radiodiffusion (RMC) and Radio Monte Carlo (RMC).

Giuseppe Volpi

Giuseppe Volpi, 1st Count of Misrata (19 November 1877 to 16 November 1947) was an Italian businessman and politician.

Count Volpi developed utilities which brought electricity to Venice, northeast Italy, and the Balkans by 1903. In 1911-1912, he acted as a negotiator in ending the Italo-Turkish War. He was the governor of the colony of Tripolitania from 1921 until 1925.

As the Kingdom of Italy’s Minister of Finance from 1925 until 1928, Volpi successfully negotiated Italy’s World War I debt repayment with the United States and with the United Kingdom, pegged the value of the lira to the value of gold, and implemented free trade policies. He was replaced in July 1928 by Antonio Mosconi.

Volpi also founded the Venice Film Festival. His son was automobile racing manager Giovanni Volpi. His grand daughter is Countess Maria Cicogna, The New York Times describes her as “the first major female Italian film producer” and “one of the most powerful women in European cinema”.

Volpi was president of the Confindustria from 1934 to 1943. He was removed from this position and expelled from the Grand Council of Fascism after he opposed the continuing of the war and Italy’s alliance with Hitler. He was arrested by the SS after trying to escape to Switzerland.

Volpi who was a leading figure of the National Fascist Party, underwent a series of legal proceedings for his responsibilities during the fascist regime after the war. His illness prevented him from appearing before the judges, but, thanks to the Togliatti amnesty he was acquitted of all charges, after a life spent at the top of the Fascist Party.

Venice Film Festival

The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival (Italian: Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, “International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale”) is an annual film festival held in Venice, Italy. It is the world’s oldest film festival and one of the “Big Five” International film festivals worldwide, which include the Big Three European Film Festivals alongside the Toronto Film Festival in Canada and the Sundance Film Festival in the United States. The Festivals are internationally acclaimed for giving creators the artistic freedom to express themselves through film. In 1951, FIAPF formally accredited the festival.

Founded by the National Fascist Party in Venice in August 1932, the festival is part of the Venice Biennale, one of the world’s oldest exhibitions of art, created by the Venice City Council on 19 April 1893. The range of work at the Venice Biennale now covers Italian and international art, architecture, dance, music, theatre, and cinema. These works are experienced at separate exhibitions: the International Art Exhibition, the International Festival of Contemporary Music, the International Theatre Festival, the International Architecture Exhibition, the International Festival of Contemporary Dance, the International Kids’ Carnival, and the annual Venice Film Festival, which is arguably the best-known of all the events.

The festival is held in late August or early September on the island of the Lido in the Venice Lagoon. Screenings take place in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi. The festival continues to be one of the world’s most popular and fastest-growing.

The 79th Venice International Film Festival was held from 31 August to 10 September 2022.

Gillo Pontecorvo

Gilberto Pontecorvo Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (19 November 1919 to 12 October 2006) was an Italian filmmaker associated with the political cinema movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for directing the landmark war docudrama The Battle of Algiers (1966), which won the Golden Lion at the 21st Venice Film Festival, and earned him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

His other films include the Kapò (1960), a Holocaust drama; Burn! (1969), a period film about a fictional slave revolt in the Lesser Antilles; and Ogro (1979), a dramatization of the assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco by Basque separatists. He also directed several documentaries and short films.

In 2000, he received the Pietro Bianchi Award at the Venice Film Festival. The same year, he was ascended as a Knight’s Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Robert Beltran

Robert Adame Beltran (born 19 November 1953) is an American actor, known for his role as Commander Chakotay on the 1990s television series Star Trek: Voyager. He is also known for stage acting in California, and for playing Raoul Mendoza in the 1982 black comedy film Eating Raoul.

Terrence C. Carson

Terrence C. Carson (born 19 November 1958) is an American actor best known for portraying Kyle Barker on the FOX sitcom Living Single and voicing Mace Windu in various Star Wars media. He is also known for his long-running voice role as Kratos in the God of War video game series from 2005 until 2013.

Adam Driver

Adam Douglas Driver (born 19 November 1983) is an American actor and United States Marine Corps veteran. He is the recipient of various accolades, including the Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup for Best Actor, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award, two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Primetime Emmy Awards.

Driver made his Broadway debut in Mrs. Warren’s Profession (2010) and subsequently appeared in Man and Boy (2011). He rose to prominence with a supporting role in the HBO comedy-drama series Girls (2012-2017), for which he received three consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations. Driver began his film career in supporting roles in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2012), and the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). He won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his lead role in the drama Hungry Hearts (2014).

Driver gained wider recognition for playing Ben Solo / Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015-2019). He starred as a poet in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016), the missionary in Martin Scorsese’s religious epic Silence (2016), and Steven Soderbergh’s heist comedy Logan Lucky (2017). In 2019, he returned to theatre in the Broadway revival of Burn This, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. He garnered consecutive Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actor for Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Best Actor for Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story (2019). In 2021, he starred in the musical Annette, and two films directed by Ridley Scott, the medieval drama The Last Duel (2021) and the crime drama House of Gucci.

Driver is a veteran of the US Marine Corps. He is also the founder of Arts in the Armed Forces, a non-profit that provides free arts programming to American active-duty service members, veterans, military support staff, and their families worldwide.