George Cukor Retrospective and new selection committee at Locarno 66th

My Fair Lady (1964) by George Cukor

The Retrospective for the 66th edition of the Festival del film Locarno will be dedicated to the Hollywood director George Cukor. The new selection committee to work with the Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian on the programme for 2013 has also been finalised.

The 2013 Retrospective, organised in collaboration with the Cinémathèque suisse and the National Film Museum (Museo Nazionale del Cinema) in Turin, will be dedicated this year to the American director George Cukor (1899-1983). This master of Hollywood comedy, who won an Oscar for My Fair Lady (1964), made fifty films and directed some of classical cinema’s greatest actresses, such as Greta Garbo (Camille, 1936), Judy Garland (A Star Is Born, 1954), Marilyn Monroe (Let’s Make Love, 1960), Sophia Loren (Heller in Pink Tights, 1960), Jane Fonda (The Chapman Report, 1962; The Blue Bird,1976) and Katharine Hepburn (Holiday, 1938; The Philadelphia Story, 1940; Adam’s Rib, 1949).

The Festival will show the director’s complete works and the films will be shown in the best prints available over the event’s eleven days. The screenings will be accompanied by discussions on George Cukor’s films, led by filmmakers, actors and critics invited to Locarno for the retrospective. The Festival audience will also have the opportunity attend a round-table on the filmmaker’s work, chaired by Roberto Turigliatto, the retrospective’s curator.

The Retrospective will be repeated in autumn at the Cinémathèque suisse and the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin.

Carlo Chatrian, the Festival del film Locarno’s Artistic Director, comments “For some years now the Festival has undertaken a re-reading of classical American cinema, showing how much it still has to say to us today. Following the retrospectives devoted to those who left Europe for America or have taken a look at Europe from America, I felt it was an opportune moment to culminate this exploration with one of the purest examples of the consummate art and craftsmanship of Hollywood cinema. Far more than a great director of actresses, in addition to his celebrated reputation for perfectly constructed dramas, George Cukor is the filmmaker who has best conveyed the essence of that cinema which, while seeming to dwell on the surface of things, succeeds in brilliantly illuminating the depths of our being, and who, while entertaining the viewer also enhances their intelligence.”

Read Carlo Chatrian’s blog on George Cukor.

The members of the selection committee for the 66th Festival del film Locarno, under its new Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, have also been confirmed: Mark Peranson will take up the post of Head of Programming, accompanied by Lorenzo Esposito, Sergio Fant and Aurélie Godet. Nadia Dresti, Delegate to the Artistic Directorate and Head of the Industry Office, has been appointed Head of International, working on Locarno’s international activities.

Berlin and Vienna-based Canadian film critic Mark Peranson is editor and publisher of the magazine Cinema Scope and has been a programming associate for the Vancouver International Film Festival since 1999. In 2008 he directed Waiting for Sancho, a making-of documentary on Albert Serra’s film El cant dels ocells. He has been a programmer for the Festival del film Locarno since 2010.

Italian Lorenzo Esposito worked on programs for the Venice Festival in 2001, the Turin Festival from 2002 to 2006 and the Rome Festival in 2007. He writes for several Italian newspapers and magazines and has published numerous monographs and articles on cinema. Since 2003 he has been producing Fuori Orario for the Italian public TV channel Rai Tre, curating shows about films and directors.

Sergio Fant, Italian based in Germany, is a specialist in short, experimental, art and documentary cinema, and has worked for numerous events and institutions. He was a consultant and programmer at the Orizzonti section of the Venice Festival in 2010 and 2011 for short- and medium-length films. In 2012 he was appointed a member of the Pardi di domani selection committee and consultant on experimental and artists' films at Locarno.

Paris-born Aurélie Godet began her film career in New York in 2004, as an assistant to Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón. She took on the post of Deputy Director of the New York office of Unifrance in 2006 and relocated to Europe in 2010, where she is a consultant for production companies and writes for the French publication Cahiers du Cinéma.