PardoLive Special Edition · Winter 2016
Looking Towards #Locarno69
The Heart of Film Industry is Beating in Locarno In the last 16 years the Industry section of Locarno has been committed to create a bridge between arthouse films and the film industry. Over time it has been playing an always more important role for the entire Festival, also growing in numbers. During Industry Days – created by Nadia Dresti – Locarno is in fact promoting a long series of initiatives, all focused on the actual and real needs of film industry. At the same time, in the same area, it was launched a specific training and innovation program (Industry Academy) . It is a success story made possible by friendly nature that has always characterized the Locarno platform and the ease with which one can develop networking discussions. Everything was made with only one goal: trying to extend life and visibility of the films screened along the Festival. pardo.swiss/industry
Festival del film Locarno Carlo Chatrian Artistic Director
Looking Towards #Locarno69 PardoLive wants to give voice to the research process that the Festival del film Locarno applies as much to present-day film as to the so-called cinema of the past, affirming first of all that there is really no distinction between the two. Both work on similar material (actors’ bodies, landscapes, mise-enscène strategies), both offer themselves to the viewer on the same screen. This is the case this year more than ever, as even the main retrospective welcomes the challenge of leaving behind the arthouse in order to journey into that often-forgotten galaxy of genre film. The choice arises out of the desire to explore a little-known period of a country’s filmography, approaching it from various perspectives and in this way seeking to highlight cinema’s role in giving shape to a collective imagination. We think that this
journey will bring genuine revelations and aesthetic discoveries. The retrospective dedicated to the young West German cinema of the 1950s, which we have called “Beloved and Rejected”, will offer an opportunity for illuminating finds (some names are already being defined) but most importantly an experience that will hopefully interact dialectically with the rest of the program. If today’s cinema no longer has the same social role, it still remains an art able to suggest certain shapes that capture the basic lines of an epoch. In this sense the films that make up the Festival del film Locarno’s program work in counterpoint. As in the musical technique, they offer melodies that dialog with the dominant themes. For us, directors like Chantal Akerman, Pedro Costa, Lav Diaz, Otar Iosseliani, Corneliu
Porumboiu, Alex Ross Perry, Hong Sangsoo, Albert Serra, Athina Tsangari and Andrzej Zulawski – to mention some of the filmmakers we have been lucky enough to host in Locarno recently – are essential figures not just for the intrinsic value of their films but because with their unique, distinct, contrapuntal voices, they broaden the horizon and show us the framework in which we move with greater clarity.
Artistic Director’s Blog pardo.ch/blog Facebook.com/FilmFestivalLocarno Twitter @FilmFestLocarno, @CarloChatrian Hashtag #Locarno69
Marco Solari President Carlo Chatrian Artistic Director Mario Timbal Chief Operating Officer Nadia Dresti Delegate of the Artistic Director and Head of International Carmen Werner Head of Programming Office Selection Committee Mark Peranson Head of Programming Lorenzo Esposito Sergio Fant Aurélie Godet Pardi di domani Committee Alessandro Marcionni Head of Pardi di domani Gonzalo de Pedro Amatria Bruno Quiblier Sophie Bourdon Head of Open Doors Amel Soudani-Marti Head of Press Office & Digital Communication Luca Spinosa Head of Marketing Raphaël Brunschwig Head of Sponsorship Lorenzo Buccella Head of PardoLive
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About
Sections Piazza Grande
Concorso internazionale
The square of Piazza Grande, which seats up to 8,000 viewers per night, is both the heart of the Festival and its showcase. With its giant screen, one of the biggest in the world.
Making no distinctions as to genre, origin or format, the Concorso Internazionale presents a rich panorama of cinema, including works by both established directors and emerging talents.
Screen dimensions: 26 x 14 m (364 m2) Projection box – screen distance: 80 m
Pardo d’oro 90,000 chf
Pardo for the Best Director 20,000 chf
Prix du Public UBS 30,000 chf Variety Piazza Grande Award
Special Jury Prize 30,000 chf
Pardo for the Best Actress Pardo for the Best Actor
Concorso Pardi di domani Cineasti del presente
Signs of Life
Histoire(s) du cinéma
A selection of works – out of competition – by well-established filmmakers, exploring new narrative forms and innovative film language.
The section is the sidebar dedicated to the history of cinema, offering works from filmmakers and artists to whom the Festival dedicates special tributes, as well as documentaries about filmmakers and actors.
The section that enables audiences to discover those filmmakers who are shaping the cinema of tomorrow, the Concorso Cineasti del presente is open to first or second features.
Designed for short auteur films, the Pardi di domani section has two competitions: one for recent Swiss productions and the other, international, for films from all over the world.
Pardo d’oro CDP – Premio Nescens 40,000 chf
Pardino d’oro for the Best International Short Film – Premio SRG SSR 10,000 chf
Pardo for the Best New Director 20,000 chf Cine+ Special Jury Prize 25,000 chf
Pardino d’oro for the Best Swiss Short Film – Premio Swiss Life 10,000 chf Pardino d’argento SRG SSR for the International Competition 5,000 chf Pardino d’argento Swiss Life for the National Competition 5,000 chf
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Beyond the Festival
The Festival’s Afterlife It’s said that every day there’s a film festival somewhere in the world, and in most of these festivals you’re bound to find a film that premiered to great success in Locarno; very often, it’ll win a prize too. In the short four months following the 2015 edition of the Festival del film Locarno, the features screened in the 68th edition have spread the Locarno spirit worldwide, amassing both commercial and critical success. The Pardo d’oro winner, Hong Sangsoo’s Right Now, Wrong Then, wracked up 80,000 admissions in its native South Korea, and won the Best Film in Gíjon. Likewise, Locarno Best Actor Jung Jaeuyung also was victorious in Gíjon, as well as at the Asia Pacific Film Awards. Right Now, Wrong Then will be the inaugural release of Grasshopper Films in the US in 2016.
Wrong Then and No Home Movie in the Main Slate, and The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers and 88:88 in Projections. Chantal Akerman’s final film was also named as one of the top ten films of the year in the Sight & Sound Poll, and will be released in the UK and the US in 2016. Other Competition titles with notable success include Happy Hour (Best Film, Singapore; second prize in Nantes); O Futebol (Best Film, Festival dei Popoli); Te prometo anarquía (prizes in Rio, Morelia, Los Cabos, and Baja); and Pietro Marcello’s Bella e perduta (Best Film, La Roche-sur-Yon). James White, which debuted at Sundance 2015, not only won the Revelations Award at Deauville, it also received two Gotham Award and three Independent Spirit nominations. And Guibord s’en-va-t-en guerre and Les êtres chers were both named to Canada’s Top Ten of the year.
prizes at Doclisboa, Best World Documentary at Jihalva); Kaili Blues (Best New Director at the Golden Horse Awards, Best Film in Nantes); El Movimiento (winner at Brazil’s Pachamama Festival and Mar del Plata); and Concorso Cineasti del presente and First Feature winner Thithi (Best Film, Mumbai). Nicolas Parisier’s Le Grand Jeu was given France’s esteemed Prix LouisDelluc for Best First Film, while Guillaume Senez’s Swiss-Belgian coproduction Keeper continued its impressive festival run with the main prize in Torino as well as awards in Hamburg and Marrakech. And let’s not forget Signs of Life, as José Luis Guerín’s critical standout L’accademia delle muse won best film in Seville.
Thithi by Raam Reddy
No Home Movie by Chantal Akerman
Locarno highlights have had strong representation at the world’s most prestigious and popular festivals, with 17 Locarno films showing in Toronto, 19 at the Viennale, nine in Torino and nine in London (which saw Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Competition entry Chevalier win the best film). The selective New York Film Festival screened six Locarno selections, including Right Now,
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Apologies for all omitted prizes.
Happy Hour by HAMAGUCHI Ryusuke
Locarno also remains a festival of discovery for upcoming talent, with numerous features from the Filmmakers of the Present section winning acclaim at showcases worldwide. These include: Special Jury Prize winner Dead Slow Ahead (two
Last but not least, the 2015 retrospective, focusing on American renegade Sam Peckinpah travelled to Zurich (Filmpodium) and Geneva (Les Cinémas du Grütli), the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Torino, and Lincoln Center in New York. mark peranson
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Retrospective
Beloved and Rejected: German Cinema (1949 to 1963) In a 1960 essay for the magazine labyrinth, Heinrich Böll describes the difficulties of explaining the Federal Republic of Germany to a friend from abroad. He uses a rather intriguing adjective in this piece, calling the young nation ungenau, “inexact”. He meant that the FRG was characterized by contradictions and paradoxes, or to put it more casually: things refuse to add up. Why? Because nothing changed completely after May 8th, 1945; the Zero Hour is simply a myth (which some might call benign). And yet, it seems that so many thought or at least hoped that the FRG would be fundamentally different from what had come before. And it was – just in a different way, one that was less easy to narrate, while maybe more human. Yet when it came to cinema in the FRG, the Zero Hour myth worked, although the decisive moment came almost two decPardoLive
ades later, in 1962, on February 28th, at the 8th West German Days of the Short Film in Oberhausen, where 26 filmmakers proclaimed: “The old cinema is dead. We believe in the new one.” As cinephiles, most of us are children of that moment, for we were brought up with the idea that the so-called post-war film industry produced merely politically vile, commercial junk, and sabotaged the careers of those few directors deemed important. But did we really believe this narrative of oppression and victimization? Didn’t we, the two and a half generations of Bonn Republic Germans, grow up watching those films, and liking, even loving them? Not all of us, sure, but many. More often than not, they were our first contact with cinema’s pleasures; more often than not, we enjoyed them together with our families who talked about the stars of their childhood, while
cracking fond jokes about them the same way you’d jest with your friends and relatives. And didn’t we love them, our families and their audio-visual acquaintances? So many of us always sensed that there was something very inexact about the way early FRG film history was told by those who officially were said to know... They weren’t wrong in their own way, it’s just that they couldn’t see it, often still can’t, and so be it. One of the cultural legacies of the Oberhausen Zero Hour is a vast blank space. By now, the West German cinema of the nation’s early years, the troublesome era of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the Bonn Republic’s decisive years, is essentially unknown abroad while at home considered a case deserving of special pleading. In fact, even those of us who believe in the genius not only of Wolfgang  Staudte and Helmut Käutner, the official greats who indeed are 6
great (greater perhaps than we thought), but also that of little-researched and littlelauded masters like Radványi Géza, Victor Vicas, Frank Wysbar or Wolfgang Schleif – even we are still taken aback when friends from afar tell us how much they liked, say, Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Das Bekenntnis der Ina Kahr (1954) or Harald Braun’s Der gläserne Turm (1957). We were right, there is so much to this cinema, so, so much – and still, although we know, it feels hard to believe. We feel strange. Maybe it’s high time for all of us to watch some films from those years together, to get rid of many a prejudice, to start filling that blank space, and to discover the contradiction-riddled beauty of the young Bonn Republic’s cinema. olaf möller
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In collaboration with: Deutsches Filminstitut Filmmuseum With the support of: Cinémathèque suisse, German Films The Retrospective will circulate through: Film Society Lincoln Center, National Gallery of Art, Museo Nazionale del Cinema, i 1000 occhi, Filmpodium, Kino REX Bern, Filmmuseum Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf, Zeughauskino: Deutsches Historisches Museum, Caligari Film-Bühne, Kommunales Kino Metropolis/Kinemathek Hamburg, Cinemateca Portuguesa: Museu do Cinema PardoLive
Open Doors
Open Doors: South Asian Cinema The Open Doors section of the Festival del film Locarno is launching an extended exploration of South Asia in 2016. The new format, inaugurated this year, will focus on eight countries over the next three years: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. This geographic and temporal continuity will still preserve the initiative’s historic vocation. Supported since its inception by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Open Doors, overseen by new director Sophie Bourdon, will continue its mission to support and promote directors and films from countries in the global South and East where independent cinema is fragile. The new format will have three components. Each year, the Open Doors Hub (6 – 9 August, 2016) will select up to eight projects from South Asia. The participants – directors and producers – will be able to meet potential co-producers, sales agents and distributors, and find funding to help boosting the production of their projects. At the end of the session, a jury will decide the winner of the Open Doors Grant, worth 50,000 Swiss Francs and funded by the Swiss film production fund Visions Sud Est and the City of Bellinzona.
The Open Doors Lab (4 – 9 August, 2016) will offer a new, 5-day tailor made programme for a small group of professionals from some of the countries in the chosen region, with priority given to emerging producers or filmmakers producers. These professionals will have the chance to improve their entrepreneurial skills and better embrace the international market specificities. In 2016, the Open Doors Lab will focus on Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and Nepal. These countries will be included in the Open Doors Screenings, a non competitive section presenting a selection of films that are representative of their cinematographies. All participants from the region will also benefit from networking initiatives to enlarge contacts with the European and international industry. Open Doors is organized in close collaboration with the Festival del film Locarno’s Industry Office and with the support of the following partners: ACE (Ateliers du Cinéma Européen), EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs), Producers Network Marché du Film (Cannes Festival) and the TorinoFilmLab. Submissions to the 2016 edition of Open Doors Hub and Open Doors Lab can be made here by February 23rd: pardo.swiss/opendoors l. b.
First Look 6 – 8 | 8 | 2016
First Look and new Polish cinema Locarno is not just a showcase for contemporary cinema, but also a springboard for the as-yet unfinished films of the future, without a sales company attached. For confirmation of its value, we need look no further than the winner of last year’s First Look, which was dedicated to Israeli cinema. Sand Storm has since been selected for Sundance’s World Dramatic Competition and the Panorama sidebar in Berlin, with Beta Cinema handling world sales. Elite Zexer’s first feature is following the same path to success as the 2014 Brazilian First Look entry, Anna Muylaert’s The Second Mother (sold by The Match Factory), which took the Special Jury Prize for Acting at Sundance and the 2015 Berlinale Panorama Audience award, opened the Sarajevo Film Festival and is competing as the Brazilian candidate for the 2016 Oscars. Other successful predecessors include 2013’s Chilean First Look winner, To Kill a Man by PardoLive
Alejandro Fernandez Almendras (sold by Film Factory Entertainment), which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Fipresci Award at the 2014 Rotterdam Film Festival, or the winner of 2011’s Colombian edition, Juan Andrés Arango’s La Playa DC (sold by Doc and Film International), which competed for the Camera d’Or in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2012. This long series of successful gambles will hopefully continue with the next edition (coordinated by Markus Duffner), which will relaunch the challenge with a focus on one of Eastern Europe’s most thriving film industries. In 2016, First Look will be focusing on Polish Cinema, which in the last years managed to achieve several important International successes (one for all the Oscar for the best foreign language film for Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski). Thanks to the invaluable support of the Polish Film Institute, between five and seven films in post-
production will be selected at Locarno. The producers of the selected films will attend the Festival del film Locarno and present their work to industry professionals, with the aim of facilitating the films’ completion and distribution. They will be screened for the sales agents, buyers, programmers and representatives of post-production support funds who will be attending Locarno during the Industry Days event. Big names in the 2016 Jury: Cameron Bailey (Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival), Bero Beyer (Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam) and Wieland Speck (Director of Berlinale Panorama). l. b.
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Vision Award Nescens
The Lord of the Musics Howard Shore From the soundworlds that shaped almost every one of David Cronenberg’s films to the fantasy thundering of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, ranging through the musical punctuation of thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme) and Seven (David Fincher), the pursuit of sparks of rock music inHigh Fidelity (Steven Frears) or the accompaniment to the hypnoses and bizarre hiccups of Ed Wood (Tim Burton), without forgetting all those incursions into genres that arose out of the collaboration with Martin Scorsese, from the mechanical tick-tock of black comedy (After Hours) to the epic score of The Aviator to the fantastical sighs of Hugo… These are just some of the greatest examples – among the many available – of how a soundtrack can never be reduced to a secondary filmic element, to a side dish, when it has been scored with the creative touch of a composer like Howard Shore. He has the rare gift of being able to insert the music directly into that process of worldbuilding that lies at the base of a film. And it is because of this gift, put to the service of a long series of great directors, that the Festival del film Locarno is paying tribute to the great Canadian composer and conductor. This is the latest continuation of a journey that Locarno is dedicating to those figures who have shaped the history of cinema with their insight and skill. After the tributes to the special effects of Douglas Trumbull (2013), Mr Steadicam® Garrett Brown (2014) and sound designer and editor Walter Murch, the upcoming 69th edition will turn the spotlight on Howard Shore. Born in Toronto in 1946, his musical career has not been limited to the movies, though it is at the cinema that it has found its maximum resonance. This is clear not just from 9
the welcome recognition represented by a total of three Oscars (Best Original Score in 2002 for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and in 2004 for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, when he also won the award for Best Original Song for Into the West, performed by Annie Lennox). What should be noted most of all is the significance and impact his compositions have had on the invention of the most diverse auteurial universes, with that versatility that can move musical horizons in order to combine them with the image in a way that is always stimulating and never unambiguous. And if there was ever need of more examples, we can go back to where we started from: the substantial filmography of David Cronenberg, with whom Shore began working back in 1979, with the science-fiction horror The Brood. The dystopian future ruled by television violence in Videodrome (1983) would never have found its anguished density without the sinister and metallic reverberations that infect its
soundtrack. The same can be said for the horror-like suspense that musically accompanies the bodily transformations of a scientist into an insect in The Fly (1986). Cinematographic voyages that merge with Ornette Coleman’s saxophone as they delve into the hallucinated mental explorations of Naked Lunch (1991), or veer towards the disturbing electric cords of a guitar that creates the sound landscape of the erotic collisions between cars and bodies in Crash (1996). And so on, up to the more noir and dramatic styles of Cronenberg’s most recent productions (Eastern Promises, Cosmopolis, Maps to the Stars), also characterized by Shore’s music, because the ear can also lead us to the edges of other types of mental abyss. As always for Shore, he discards any kind of didactic shortcut, instead setting himself the task of sculpting, note by note, the invisible heart of the world in which everything takes place. lorenzo buccella
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2015
Actress Cécile de France.
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Masterpieces that had a profound impact on me, like Rome, Open City, were seen for the first time at this Festival. So I’m proud to receive this award here in Locarno and to be part of this great history.
Vision Award Nescens Walter Murch.
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Excellence Award Moët & Chandon Edward Norton.
Pardo d’onore Swisscom Marco Bellocchio.
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Pardo d’onore Swisscom Michael Cimino.
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Leopard Club Award Andy Garcia.
Director Andrzej Zulawski
Director Chantal Akerman
Actress Marthe Keller.
Actress Amy Schumer.
Actor and member of the Concorso internazionale Jury Udo Kier.
Pardo alla carriera Marlen Khutsiev.
Pardo alla carriera Bulle Ogier.
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Pardo d’oro 2015 Hong Sangsoo.
Filmmaker and member of the Concorso internazionale Jury Jerry Schatzberg.
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Education
For 68 years the Festival del film Locarno has been the greatest open air school of cinema, fuelled by the spirit of discovery and innovation. Building on this spirit in 2010 we gave birth to the Locarno Summer Academy with the aim of assisting the development of emerging talents in the world of cinema, maximising Locarno’s unique qualities as a meeting-place.
Academy is not an ancillary activity but is at the heart of the project of research and growth that the Festival is articulating and promoting.”
We want the LSA to be a lab where one can get a better understanding and be fully involved in the current changes occurring in the entire cinema world.
Announcements concerning the Locarno Summer Academy’s initiatives can be consulted on:
In 2016 we will offer 5 different sections who will select the best 100 young talents, favouring quality over quantity and offering personally-tailored activities.
Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian: “The Locarno Summer
pardo.swiss/education Applications open on the 7th of March
Filmmakers Academy
Industry Academy
The Filmmakers Academy is an initiative for 15 young filmmakers from around the world who have completed one or more short films that have been selected in international festivals. Since 2014 the trainees share the LSA experience with the 6 young talents selected for the Cinéfondation Résidence of the Cannes Festival. Every year directors, producers and other industry professionals come to work and think about cinema with the participants. In the last two years we had memorable sessions with Werner Herzog, Abel Ferrara, Lav Diaz, Pedro Costa, Agnès Varda, Victor Erice, Aleksandr Sokurov, Michael Cimino and many other talented artists.
The Locarno Industry is a training program launched in 2014 dedicated to young professionals in distribution, international sales, marketing, exhibition and programming, giving the new comers the opportunity to actively think about the independent cinema business and its future. The Industry Academy is a Think Tank, a dedicated time and space where experiences and visions can be shared in order to create a needed proximity and dialogue between established industry key players and the young generations. We offer 9 participants a 6-day tailor-made workshop where they can truly interact with each other, meet professionals during panels, group work sessions, case-studies, and networking events (such as StepIn) as well as they can fully enjoy the experience of festival del film Locarno. We are currently developing international bridges: 2 to 3 seats are now reserved for non-European participants in Locarno, and we have launched the Industry Academy International in Mexico, Brazil and soon in the US.
Critics Academy The Critics Academy involves 10 international young critics who will work on a daily basis, under the editorial guidance of Indiewire editor-in-chief Eric Kohn. The participants will be covering the Festival with reviews of films in the selection, articles on sidebar events, indepth reflection on the various program sections or interviews with the Festival’s guests. Since 2014 the Critics Academy dedicates also an additional program to Swiss participants.
Documentary Summer School Already in its 16th year, the DSS is jointly organized by the Università della Svizzera italiana and the Festival del film Locarno, in collaboration with the Semaine de la critique. The DSS offers places for up to 20 university students in the fields of cinema, media and communication from all the World.
Cinema e gioventù The long-established Cinema&Gioventù program, now in its 57th edition, brings together 32 college students, from Swiss and north Italian vocational schools and universities. stefano knuchel PardoLive
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L’immagine e la parola 10 – 13 | 3 | 2016
Graphic novels come to Locarno for L’immagine e la parola 2016 If cinema is the art of movement, in contrast comics use images and words to freeze a moment, loading it with a strong semantic value. These two arts of the 21st century share a common forefather, the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, famous for his studies of movement. His photographic series, which contributed to prefiguring the depiction of movement through the fixed image, can also be interpreted as studies of how movement can be arrested in a fixed image. Exponents of this second path include the great artists of the graphic novel. Attention is focusing on them more and more every year, and by now they are recognized as among the most stimulating interpreters of the contemporary world, grappling with an art in the process of transformation, from authorial voices to genre recodifications. After dedicating previous editions to Edgar Reitz, Aleksandr Sokurov and the writer Emmanuel Carrère, the Festival del
film Locarno’s spring event L’immagine e la parola (10 – 13 March, 2016) will this year be exploring the world of the graphic novel with the help of two very special guests. One is the Italian artist Lorenzo Mattotti, who since the publication of Fuochi (1984) has made a name for himself on the international scene thanks to his painterly style, with which he conceives each individual panel as a work of art, elaborating refined interior journeys that are experienced as “dreams with open eyes” by his tormented characters. The other is Blutch, from France, a true cinephile and creator of one of the most interesting “graphic essays” on the power of cinema (Pour en finir avec le cinéma, 2011). Published in English as So Long, Silver Screen, it offers reflections on the strength of cinematic imagery, transfigured by his rapid and visionary lines, a dive into the art of the dream through comic panels, cinematic inspirations and films born from the pages of a book. daniela persico
Beyond the Festival
On the road to Dolce Vita lifestyle On the Grand Tour of Switzerland, the journey is the goal. This route will lead you 1000 miles through four language regions, over five Alpine passes, to eleven UNESCO World Heritage Sites as well as two biospheres and along 22 lakes, one of them the well-known Lake Maggiore. Thanks to its privileged location, the climate and the stunning landscape along our lakeshores, the Lake Maggiore region and its surrounding valleys present an ideal
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stage during your Grand tour of Switzerland. Palms and glaciers, ancient churches and modern architecture, quiet valleys and international events make this region unique and fascinating. Our hiking trail network includes more than 1400 km of paths from the lakeside winding through the valleys and up towards the summits of our mountains. You can discover the most beautiful corners of the Lake Maggiore region by car, in the saddle of your motorbike, on a bike or
on a romantic train journey full of nostalgia, with the Centovalli Railway. While visiting Locarno for the film festival don’t miss the chance to discover the many facets of this exceptional destination …Experience a unique and unforgettable encounter! Your Holiday in Ticino, Switzerland; get inspired: www.ascona-locarno.com
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A Festival History 1946
The great Italian neorealism passes through here. The year is 1946, first edition of the Festival. Among the 15 movies in program, there is also Roma città aperta. At the award ceremony the Jury – there is also a 25-years-old Alida Valli – ignores it, just like it will do the very next year with Paisà. Only on the third attempt, with Germania anno zero, in 1948, Roberto Rossellini is awarded with the Grand Prix.
1984
A very distinctive haircut, the deep gaze and the characteristics of the New Yorker downtown scene of that period. In the collection of Locarno’s great discoveries, we cannot avoid to mention Jim Jarmusch. In 1984, his Stranger than Paradise – developed with many ideas and a few money – comes to the Concorso and is immediately awarded with the Pardo d’oro.
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1949
Ladri di biciclette, directed by Vittorio De Sica (here with Gina Lollobrigida), won the Special Jury Prize. The Festival became a regular rendezvous for the high season of Italian neo-realism, and as early as 1954 it was Locarno that organized the first ever retrospective of the startling new directions taken by the immediate post-war Italian cinema.
1990
And it was at Locarno that the new Iranian cinema made an impact, and was subsequently recognised throughout Europe and the entire world. From its progenitor Abbas Kiarostami (here, in 1990, for his film Khaneye doust kodjast? – Where is my friend’s house?) and back in 1995 for what was the first retrospective of his work to be organized, to Jafar Panahi who in 1997 won Locarno’s major award for Ayneh (The Mirror).
1959
The years of division into the French cinema. Cannes, 1959: François Truffaut brings to the competition Les quatre cents coups, a milestone. The very year after Jean-Luc Godard signs a masterpiece like À bout de souffle. But the first Nouvelle Vague film comes from Locarno. In 1958 Le beau Serge, Claude Chabrol’s debut work, is awarded with the prize for best directing.
2003
The Festival’s feeling for Asian cinema dates back a long time, as evidenced by the many Golden Leopards won by Chinese and Japanese films, and the high profile afforded to some of the most interesting new generation of filmmakers. In 2003 the South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk featured in the Concorso internazionale with his Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring).
1960
It is 1960. The arrival in Locarno of Marlene Dietrich, along with Joseph von Sternberg, is a vision. All eyes are on her, and the paparazzi even follow the diva when she wants to shop on the lakeside of Ascona. Then comes the night, and her entrance in the park of the Grand Hotel for the evening screening of the film, suddenly becomes a core scene in the history of the Festival.
2005
Piazza Grande stage. Suddenly, Wim Wenders grabs the microphone and says (in Italian): “Everybody is asking me what does it mean to receive a Pardo d’onore. Well, now I know: I have become a pardo too”. At the same time he lifts up his sweater and, surprisingly, shows a leopard-skin tshirt. The consequent applause is still one of the longest recorded in the history of the Festival.
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1964
He is a 30-years-old Czechoslovakian youngster who wins the Vela d’oro at the Festival, with his debut feature movie. A great revelation. With Black Peter, Milos Forman shows the daily atmosphere of a Czechoslovakian small town. But that’s not all. The audience can also foresee the feelings of the young people who are ready for rebellion, some years before Prague Spring.
2006
Piazza Grande like the launching pad for movies which take wings, up to the statue of the Academy Awards. And for Locarno, 2006 is really a year of grace. First of all, the great spy-thriller film Das Leben der Anderen which cuts the breath to the thousands of people of the audience; then comes the grotesque soul of the American comedy Little Miss Sunshine to offer contagious laughter. Both the movies, a few months after, are awarded with the Academy.
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1972
Pardo d’oro with his debut movie. Also for Mike Leigh Locarno was the incipit of a cinematographic journey which has made him one of the masters of contemporary cinema. In 1972 Bleak Moments arises from a Concorso internazionale which sees the participation of another great British filmmaker: Ken Loach, with Family Life.
2013
A cyclone also known as Werner Herzog brings an air of adventure and grand cinema to Locarno. And not just to the big Piazza Grande screen, the perfect backdrop to give bulk to the titanic undertaking of Fitzcarraldo. The contagion is everywhere: a crowd of over a thousand fans attends the Masterclass given by the Pardo d’onore Swisscom.
1981
In 1981 the Concorso internazionale sees the participation of the debut movie of a director destined to become a touchstone of American independent cinema. Together with Monty Montgomery she signs the movie Breakdown (which later will be titled The Loveless). Her name is Kathryn Bigelow, and with Locarno it will be a spark of love. She will come back in 1993 as a member of the official jury and in 1997 for the great retrospective of the 50th year of the Festival.
2014
Just before the screening of Sils Maria by Olivier Assayas, the winner of the Excellence Award Moët & Chandon 2014, Juliette Binoche, takes to the stage and immediately enchants the Piazza Grande crowds.
1983
It is his first overseas trip. It is his graduation thesis and, consequently, also his first feature film: Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. In other words, the story of a barber shop which is actually a front of clandestine betting. It is the movie which made the world aware of Spike Lee and was awarded with the Pardo d’oro in 1983.
2015
In 2015, the Piazza Grande stage hosts a cavalcade of big names from world cinema, from Edward Norton to Andy Garcia. But once again, what amazes the Festival’s audience is the willingness of certain directors to talk about themselves and their films. From this perspective, maverick filmmaker Michael Cimino’s conversation with the public proves particularly memorable. A flood of anecdotes, memories and reflections that no one – not even the great American director himself – had any desire to interrupt. l. b.
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PardoLive PardoLive PardoLive 68° Festival del film Locarno
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Wednesday · Mercoledì 5 | 8 | 2015
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Thursday · Giovedì 6 | 8 | 2015
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Monday · Lunedì 10 | 8 | 2015
Clotilde Courau
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Chantal Akerman Michael Cimino Petra Costa Lea Glob Santiago Lozano Álvarez
Júlio Bressane Anne Émond Anurag Kashyap Isiah Medina
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Thursday · Giovedì 13 | 8 | 2015
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Walter Murch
Marco Bellocchio
Jean Douchet LEE Chung
HONG Sangsoo
Jeremy Dawson
Carmen Maura
Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Milcho Manchevski
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Facts & Figures 2015 Total Audience
Screenings Sites
Feature Films
Short Films
World Premieres
164,000
10
179
87
97
Accredited Professional Delegates
Industry Accredited
Accredited Companies
3,233
1,105
706