Pardo News 9 | 2 | 2011

Pardo News

Behind the poster Design and art direction: Jannuzzi Smith

Dialogue Locarno has always sought to be a space for dialogue and exchange between film industries near and far, and between public and professionals, and that commitment is reflected in the 2011 poster.

The dialogue is established by the glance that flies between the Leopard (the Festival symbol) and the eyes of a woman, who might be either actor or spectator at the event.

Openness Openness is a guiding principle in programming at the Locarno Film Festival, always attentive to the latest trends, emerging talents and new film industries. Openness also features in the 2011 Festival poster with a meeting of minds suggested by the overlapping eyes, that can imply attraction and fascination, but with a degree of risk.

Projection An essential element of cinema, projection is also to the fore in the poster. The two figures appear distorted through the use of two separate anamorphic projections, inviting viewers to take an active part in the visual process, changing their points of view to appreciate the poster’s rich stylistic invention.

Photography: Matteo Patocchi | Tim Flach

Pardo News

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Editorial

Open Doors

Our Beloved Month of August The 64th edition of the Festival del film Locarno will take place 3 – 13 August 2011.

Last year we wanted to infuse the Festival with a new energy via a bold selection of films, an eclectic choice that represents an openness to innovative genres and an even greater curiosity in all forms of cinema.

Measures taken to benefit both the public audience and professionals, such as the reduction in the number of films screened and the creation of the Industry Days to encourage the films’ commercial careers generated highly positive reactions – and results. We will continue this policy of making the Festival del film Locarno more dynamic, aiming to consolidate its position as an unmissable event for independent films from all over the world, young new auteurs, as well as cinéphiles and all those who are interested in contemporary cinema or are directly involved in its development and diffusion.

This year we will further develop encounters between filmmakers and the audience, increase our efforts in terms of promoting and supporting the films we present as world or international premières in the various Festival sections (Concorso internazionale, Concorso Cineasti del presente, Piazza Grande, Pardi di domani…) in order to ensure that Locarno remains ever more essential, welcoming and exciting for auteurs, professionals and viewers. Both populist and cinéphile, ambitious and festive, Locarno combines the pleasures of discovery, entertainment and celebration of film history’s masters, past and present.

Thus, following the triumph of the Lubitsch retrospective, Locarno will show the com-

Colophon Head of editorial team Lorenzo Buccella Graphics Luca Spinosa Photography Ivana De Maria Xavier Lambours FotoFestival TiPress Print Salvioni Arti Grafiche, Bellinzona printed on FSC paper

plete works of Vincente Minnelli, genius of the musical, and Hollywood melodrama, and invites Indian cinema to unveil its splendours and incredible diversity on our Festival screens with a selection of its greatest classics as part of Open Doors India. Several other tributes will round out a fine and exuberant panorama of world cinema. Who will follow in the wake of Alain Tanner, JIA Zhang-ke, Chiara Mastroianni, John C. Reilly, Menahem Golan, Valeria Golino, Francesco Rosi, Eric Khoo, Philippe Parreno, Benoit Jacquot this year?

Come and join us in Locarno this summer to find out, and spend that “beloved month of August” with us. (Olivier Père)

Piazza Grande

Open Doors for Indian Cinema India is larger than the world, so says an old proverb. The same could be said of India’s film industry, top-ranked globally in terms of sheer productivity with 1300 movies a year, but also multi-faceted, breaking down into a myriad of micro-realities that escape any facile attempt at categorization. Which is why Open Doors 2011, the Locarno’s co-production workshop, will be turning its spotlight on this vast nation.

“Alongside the wealth and diversity of its commercial output,” noted Olivier Père, presenting the event at the recent International Film Festival of India in Goa, “India also has a host of talents trying to find an outlet of expression via more independent circuits, and facing innumerable difficulties”. Filmmaking talents of that kind are of course the prime target of the upcoming Open Doors, which as always will benefit from the support of the Swiss Foreign Ministry’s Agency for Development and Cooperation. The objective is the same as every year: to assist the filmmakers of the selected projects in finding co-production partners and bringing their films to the screen. In addition, as Open Doors head Martina Malacrida is quick to point out, the focus on India carries on a cooperation already under way with the FILM BAZAAR 2010 Screenwriters’ Lab at the IFFI: 12 Indian screenwriters took part in the last two Locarno festivals, presenting their work and meeting industry professionals from around the world. The hope is that they may repeat the kind of feat achieved

by China’s LI Hongqi, who was discovered at Open Doors 2009 and won the Pardo d’oro with Winter Vacation (Han jia) the very next year. (Lorenzo Buccella)

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Retrospective

Vincente Minnelli: an American in Locarno Following Ernst Lubitsch, in 2011 the Festival del film Locarno will pay tribute to another major filmmaker, Vincente Minnelli. Famous for his many classic musicals, Minnelli was also a master of comedy and melodrama, an aesthete whose films display a wealth of emotion, intelligence and sophistication.

Vincente (b. Lester Anthony) Minnelli was born on February 28 in 1903 to a family of showmen in Chicago. He made his stage début at three and a half, and developed a passion for literature, painting and drawing from an early age. He worked first as a window-dresser in a large department store then as a costume designer in the theatre. His ambition led him to New York where he became artistic director at Radio City Music Hall, and then a stage director. Dubbed the « Prince of Music Hall », inevitably Minnelli was drawn by the siren call of Hollywood. After a false start in 1936, it was after meeting producer Arthur Freed in 1940 that his career really took off. Freed, the man who had revolutionised the musical, offered Minnelli a contract at MGM. Minnelli’s first feature, Cabin in the Sky (1943), a musical with an entirely black cast, was a hit. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), featuring Judy Garland, who was to

An American in Paris (1951)

become his first wife a year later, initiated a whole series of masterpieces: Ziegfeld Follies, The Clock, The Pirate, Madame Bovary, Father of the Bride, An American in Paris, The Bad and the Beautiful, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon. Pitched between dream and reality, humanism and cruelty, the real world and a highly stylised representation of it, Minnelli’s films mark the apogee of Hollywood classicism, but also display an approach to romantic sentiment and overwrought characters that is as personal as it is stylish.

From the mid-50s onwards, Minnelli developed and heightened the narrative dimensions of his cinema in powerful melodramas, intimist or flamboyant, in which his mise en scène became increasingly choreographic and pictorial. During this period The Cobweb, Lust for Life (a sublime Van Gogh biopic), Tea and Sympathy, Gigi, Some Came Running, Home from the Hill, The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Two Weeks in Another Town, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The Sandpiper alternated with more light-hearted comedies. A victim of the decline of the studio system, Minnelli found it increasingly difficult to make films. His cinematic legacy was the highly moving A Matter of Time in 1976,

Vincente Minnelli

starring Ingrid Bergman and his daughter, Liza Minnelli. The director died in 1986.

He brilliantly directed some of Hollywood’s greatest stars: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Katharine Hepburn, Jennifer Jones, Spencer Tracy, Leslie Caron, Kirk Douglas, Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Mitchum, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton… An American in Paris and Gigi won the Oscar for Best Film, and Vincente Minnelli an Oscar for Best Director for the latter.

All of Vincente Minnelli’s films will be screened in the highest-quality 35mm prints, accompanied by a round-table discussion and introductions to the films by filmmakers, actors and critics. There will also be a monograph by Emmanuel Burdeau, former editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma, published by Capricci with the collaboration of the Festival del film Locarno. In this illustrated essay, the writer offers an original analysis of Minnelli’s work and the end of Hollywood classicism, with a critical re-evaluation of the director’s late melodramas (perhaps his finest films) and an exploration of how in addition to the oft-cited Minnellian “dream” there are so many other, equally strong elements: a reflection on art, a particular strategy, a portrait of childhood, a reaction to the arrival of television … (Olivier Père)

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Pardo News

News

The Long Lives of Films from Locarno The facts speak for themselves: prestigious awards and numerous appearances at the world’s major film events. The titles presented at last year’s Festival have gone on to enjoy long and impressive post-Locarno careers. From the raft of films picked up for the showcase of the Toronto Film Festival (14 in all) to the group of 13 selected for the recent Rotterdam Film Festival, with numerous worldwide appearances in between – Turin, Tokyo, Mumbai, San Sebastian – a screening at Locarno has proved to be a perfect international launch pad. First and foremost, the 2010 Golden Leopard, China’s Han jia (Winter Vacation), which repeated its Locarno triumph by taking the top award at the CinDi Festival in Seoul. A number of other revelatory works from Locarno have likewise gone on to enjoy further success. One such is Rammbock, a debut feature presented in Piazza Grande last August, which has since garnered a bouquet of international prizes, including best film at the Viennale, where another first film from Locarno, Periferic (Outbound), was laurelled with a Fipresci award. This taut Romanian drama has also gained plaudits at the Warsaw Festival (special jury prize and best screenplay award) and was triumphantly received at the Thessaloniki Festival, scoring a hat trick of top awards: best film, best actress (Ana Ularu) and the critics’ prize. Indeed there were “leopard spots” dotted around the list of prizewinners at the Greek festival in almost every category: as well as a mention for Canada’s Jo pour Jonathan, the other Romanian debut feature Morgen – which took the special jury prize at Locarno – won awards in Thessaloniki for best direction (Marian Crisan) and best actor (Andras Hathazi), plus another Fipresci award. The global map of post-Locarno prize-winning also now proudly shows Grand Prizes for Tilva Ros (Estoril and Belfort Film Festivals, plus an audience prize), for Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (Sitges Festival) and for Beli Beli Svet (White White World) at the Cottbus Festival. The many successes of the past few months confirm the vocation for discovering film talent that has always been a characteristic of the Locarno Festival, making it the ideal platform for the kind of young filmmaking that needs a springboard to international acclaim. (Lorenzo Buccella)

Industry Days

Locarno’s Window on the Marketplace

Introduced only last year, the Industry Days have nonetheless established themselves right from the start as an indispensable part of the Festival. After the success and positive feedback of their debut year, the Industry Days will be returning to Locarno in 2011, providing a dedicated platform for all professional attendees and an unmissable three-day meet (from 6 to 8 August) for everyone involved in contemporary independent filmmaking. In line with its determination to establish increasingly solid links between films selected and world markets, the Locarno Festival offers to accredited industry visitors, in particular buyers, international sales agents and programming staff from other festivals, a chance to view titles showing in the two competitions and in Piazza Grande at special industry screenings.

Film professionals are thus given a perfect networking opportunity, especially with the Open Doors events running together on the same dates in the Festival calendar.

The overall result, as Nadia Dresti (Head of the Industry Office) puts it, has been to create a kind of “virtual market” that has breathed new life into the Festival. To gain some idea of its impact, we need only look at the final figures for 2010: 900 accredited attendees, 242 buyers from all over the world, including prestigious names such as IFC and Visit Films (USA), Mongrel Media (Canada), 6 Sales (Spain), SND (France) and Artificial Eye (United Kingdom); moreover, the majority of those attending have already confirmed their intention to return this year. The industry platform is one way of enhancing the tight-linked chain of care and attention that Locarno has always ensured for films that are part of its official selection, offering them maximum visibility with a view to securing long life post-festival. “In contrast to similar events at other festivals,” concludes Nadia Dresti, “the fact that the Industry Days are concentrated exclusively on films chosen for the official program means that we can ensure individual attention for all titles, responding to individual needs or particular potential outlets on a case-by-case basis. When it comes down to it, all we do is add something more to the special value of selection and discovery that has been the foundation of Locarno’s fine tradition”. (L.B.)

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John C. Reilly

Flashback

A sense of renewed energy was in the air, due in large part to a general feeling of expectation and confidence in Pere’s ability to steer the fest toward resurgence. (…)

The event is expected to become a permanent fixture in the postCannes, pre-Toronto landscape.

Variety, Jay Weissberg

Quentin Dupieux

Alain Tanner

Nina Meurisse

Le premier exercice d’Olivier Père s’est terminé avec l’ovation unanime de 3’000 spectateurs.

Le directeur artistique du festival redonne un rôle crucial à la manifestation.

L’action d’Olivier Père à la tête de la Quinzaine des Réalisateurs comme ici lors de sa première année à Locarno a souvent été saluée par l’association de deux mots: renouveau et écclectisme.

Le Temps, Thierry Jobin

Cahiers du Cinéma, Joachim Lepastier

Questa 63a edizione è la prima curata da Père.

Quarantenne francese dall’anima divisa in due fra l’amore per i maestri del passato e per il nuovo che emerge, il neodirettore è riuscito a comporre tale dicotomia in un programma stimolante e articolato: da un lato varando la straordinaria retrospettiva dedicata a Ernst Lubitsch; dall’altra mettendo su un programma giovane, diverso e controverso.

La Stampa, Alessandra Levantesi

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Pardo News

Es bleibt dabei: 2010 ist in Locarno ein starker Jahrgang gewesen. Das Festival präsentierte sich risikoreich, vielfältigund damit auch jünger.

Auch Olivier Père dürfte noch für manche Überraschung gut sein: Schon diesmal kann seine Auswahl locker mit der des letzten BerlinaleWettbewerbs mithalten.

Neue Zürcher Zeitung,

Frankfurter Allgemeine

Claudia Schwartz

Zeitung, Rüdiger Suchsland

Ana Ularu

Francesco Rosi

Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond

Pere had promised to restore the festival’s former reputation for risk-taking by focusing on new directors and ‘discoveries’. The general feeling was that his changes were a success; the festival felt vital, while the sheer lack of consensus on some titles demonstrated how engagingly unpredictable it was.

Chiara Mastroianni

Time Out London, David Jenkins JIA Zhang-ke

Valeria Golino

Day 1

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Piazza Grande Rubber

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Benoît Magimel Pardo News Partner

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Piazza Grande InvisibleBoy

Alain Tanner Pardo d’onore Swisscom Pardo News Partner

Day 9

Day 8

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Day 6

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Ernst Lubitsch Pardo News Partner

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Day 10

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Day 4

Guest stars

Excellence Award Moët & Chandon Chiara Mastroianni

Pardo d’onore Swisscom JIA Zhang-ke

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Opening film Au fond des bois

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Day 3

Day 2

Day 11

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Pardo News Daily Magazine of Festival del film Locarno

Pardo d'oro Winter Vacation Pardo News Partner

Covers, 2010