Thursday, August 16--------As an adjunct to the announcement of the top prizes at the Locarno International Film Festival this past weekend (see previous story), the Festival announced the winners in its Open Doors initiative on August 8th. Open Doors is the Festival's co-production lab, which is organised with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The 2007 session was devoted to film projects from the Near and Middle East. Thirteen projects, selected fr...
LOCARNO 2005 -- THE FULL REPORT 58th LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL FEATURES MOST COMPLETE ORSON WELLES RETRO EVER -- by Alex Deleon -- (for <www.filmfestivals.com>) The 58th installment of the Locarno film festival at the Tippety-top of glorious Lago Maggiore in the Italian Speaking part of Switzerland (Ticino) got underway on Wednesday, August 3rd and will go on until August 13. Some 300 films of all kinds will be projected at numerous venues all over town, but the main event is the slate of...
Tuesday, August 14----------The Locarno International Film Festival, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year in the picturesque city of Locarno in the Swiss canton of Ticino, held its Gala Awards ceremony on Saturday evening, honoring a group of exceptional films from around the world. The Japanese drama THE REBIRTH won the Golden Leopard, the Festival's highest honor. Director Masahiro Kobayashi collected his award at the ceremony held in the city's expansive Piazza Grande. The dir...
The 60th edition of the Locarno International Film Festival was opened on Wednesday, 1st August, with world premiere of the Japanese animation Vexille by Fumihiko Sori, screened in D-Cinema (High Definition).The screening was followed by an homage to the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, recently deceased, with a D-Cinema projection of his last film, Saraband (2003), shot in digital. The 60th edition of the Locarno International Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday August 1st on the Piazza Grand...
Tuesday, July 24---------Two of Europe's finest actors will receive the Locarno Excellence Awards in the beautiful resort city of Locarno, in the Ticino canon of Switzerland, as part of the Locarno Film Festival. The Festival, one of Europe's oldest, will pay tribute to Spanish actress Carmen Maura and French actor Michel Piccoli as part of its Festival events. The Locarno Excellence Award is given annually to an actor or actors of international standing. Previous honorees have includ...
This year the Locarno International Film Festival will celebrate 60 years of existence.Yet it remains young at heart: no less than twenty first films will be unveiled. It remains curious: no less than thirty countries are represented in the official selection.And it remains courageous: the programme for this edition is distinguished by its diversity, its contrasts, the way it pushes the envelope, and its surprises. All of which confirms that Locarno is the Festival for discovery par excellence.A...
The winners of the three prizes in the Open Doors section were announced: two Indonesian projects (The Photograph by Nan Achnas and Jermal by Ravi Bharwani) and one from Malaysia (Living Quietly by Tan Chui Mui). Southeast Asia is the focus for this year's Open Doors. 11 projects were chosen from the 50 entered from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. During this fourth Open Doors workshop they were presented to potential producers and co-producers from around the world and from Europe ...
11 projects from Southeast Asia invited to Locarno “Open Doors underscores in a practical way one of the Festival’s vocational objectives – to bring together film cultures and traditions that are different or distant from each other,” notes Frédéric Maire, Locarno’s new artistic director, “and, with effect from this year, the section is to enjoy a higher profile within the Festival”.The Open Doors workshop, thanks to the support of the Swiss Foreign Ministry’s Agency for Develo...
The 58th installment of the Locarno film festival at the Tippety-top of glorious Lago Maggiore in the Italian Speaking part of Switzerland (Ticino) got underway on Wednesday, August 3rd and concluded August 13. Some 300 films of all kinds will be projected at numerous venues all over town, but the main event is the slate of 18 features in competition for the spotted leopard awards, the jungle cat in question being the symbol of this fabulous Alpine resort city for nearly a hundred years – or...
NASHVILLE CLOSES FEST AS AWARDS ARE ANNOUNCEDThe 58th installment of the Locarno film festival at the Tippety-top of glorious Lago Maggiore in the Italian Speaking part of Switzerland (Ticino) got underway on Wednesday, August 3rd and concluded August 13. Some 300 films of all kinds will be projected at numerous venues all over town, but the main event is the slate of 18 features in competition for the spotted leopard awards, the jungle cat in question being the symbol of this fabulous Alpine re...
LOCARNO -- AUTHORS AND PERSONALITIESLocarno is above all a festival of "Auteur” Cinema, a term for which there is no neat equivalent in English other than to say ”authors” (i.e., directors) of personal films not dictated to by the demands of the market place, or of producers, nor made to please anybody but the author of the film himself -- a bit long winded, but the French always seem to have a word for it, especially when it comes to cinema. This being said the name of the game in Loc...
Locarno International Film Festival 2004It is common knowledge since Lenin's famous statement that film and politics are very intricately connected. This was nicely demonstrated by this year's Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. More surprisingly, this year even the Locarno Film Festival, traditionally associated with young, off mainstream and world cinema, also took an explicitly political turn. The Locarno Film Festival was always the odd one out on the European festival scene. After the ...
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIONThe Official Jury of the 57th Locarno International Film Festival:Olivier Assayas, Director, FranceRené Burri, Photographer, SwitzerlandTilde Corsi, Producer, ItalyUdo Kier, Actor, GermanyDavid Robinson, Critic and film historian, UKSabiha Sumar, Director, PakistanYu Lik-wai, Director, ChinaThe jury has unanimously awarded the:GOLDEN LEOPARD, Grand Prize of the City and Region of Locarno (90,000 SF to beshared equally between the director and the producer) for the best ...
