'I usually take up projects that I don't know. Then I get into it. I try to grab the universal theme. As a foreign filmmaker, accuracy is where I start with.'

Brokeback Mountain, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, was Lee's screen adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx's short story.

The film, set in the 1960s, follows the tragic love tale involving a young ranch-hand and a rodeo cowboy.

Lee said his Chinese background was not an issue when making a film about the American cowboy culture of the 1960s.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong director Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Taiwanese singing sensation Jay Chou Jie-lun arrived in Venice to present summer box office hit Initial D in the festival's out-of-competition section.

Arriving from a promotional trip to Japan, Lau said the Japanese press loved the film, even though it was a screen adaptation of a Japanese classic comic title done by Chinese filmmakers and stars.

'They don't have a problem with it,' Lau said. 'Perhaps Jay looks a bit Japanese. But they are very happy that finally someone has made a movie out of the comic.'

Lau said that the shooting of his Hollywood debut The Flock, starring Richard Gere, will start in November.

The festival also announced at the very last minute that Japanese cult filmmaker Takeshi Kitano's feature Takeshi's was this year's 'surprise film'.

Kitano was in Venice to present his work.