Locarno Festival

Locarno Festival

Piazza Grande screening venue
Location Locarno, Switzerland
Founded 1946
Website www.pardo.ch

The Locarno Festival (formerly called the Festival del film Locarno and commonly referred to as the Locarno Film Festival) is an annual film festival held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, it is one of the longest-running film festivals in the world.[1] The festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative and documentary, short, avant-garde, and retrospective programs. The Piazza Grande section is held in one of the world’s largest open-air screening venues, seating 8,000 spectators.[2]

The top prize of the Festival is the Golden Leopard, awarded to the best film in the International Competition. Other awards include the Leopard of Honour for career achievement, and the Prix du Public UBS, the public choice award.

Since 2013, Carlo Chatrian has served as Artistic Director, and the primary Selection Committee included Mark Peranson (Head of Programming), Lorenzo Esposito, Sergio Fant, and Aurélie Godet.[3][4]

The 70th Locarno Festival is scheduled to be held 2 - 12 August 2017.[5]

History

The open-air screening of the Locarno Festival on the Piazza Grande is featured on the Swiss twenty-franc banknote since 2017.

The Festival del film Locarno kicked off on 23 August 1946, at the Grand Hotel of Locarno with the screening of the movie " 'O sole mio " by Giacomo Gentilomo.[1] The first edition was organized in less than three months with a line-up of fifteen movies, mainly American and Italian, among which was Rome, Open City directed by Roberto Rossellini, And Then There Were None directed by René Clair (1945), Double Indemnity by Billy Wilder (1944) and The Song of Bernadette by Henry King (1943).

Later, the Festival del film Locarno presented movies and short movies by many international directors such as Claude Chabrol, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Verhoeven, Miloš Forman, Marco Bellocchio, Glauber Rocha, Raul Ruiz, Alain Tanner, Mike Leigh, Béla Tarr, Chen Kaige, Edward Yang, Alexandr Sokurov, Atom Egoyan, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Ang Lee, Gregg Araki, Catherine Breillat, Abbas Kiarostami, Gus Van Sant, Pedro Costa, Fatih Akin, Claire Denis and Kim Ki-Duk.

Awards

Competitive Awards

Concorso internazionale (international competition) - Awards

Concorso Cineasti del Presente (Filmmakers of the Present) - Awards

Pardi di domani (Leopards of Tomorrow) - Awards

Special Awards

Pardo d'onore Swisscom

For some 20 years now, the Pardo d'onore (Leopard of Honour, since 2009 Pardo d'onore Swisscom) has provided an opportunity to commend illustrious film directors, who embody the very idea of cinema which the festival has supported so passionately since its inception: the best of auteur films, creative and audacious, with a strong vision and a personal style, endlessly reinventing itself. Locarno is proud to number amongst recipients of the Pardo d‘onore such master filmmakers as Jacques Rivette, Manoel de Oliveira, Samuel Fuller, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jean-Luc Godard, Daniel Schmid, Ken Loach, Ermanno Olmi, Terry Gilliam, Abbas Kiarostami, Wim Wenders, Aleksandr Sokurov, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Amos Gitai, William Friedkin, Alain Tanner, Jia Zhangke, Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda, Michael Cimino and Marco Bellocchio, winners of the Vela d'argento in 1965, and Alejandro Jodorowsky in 2016.

Excellence Award Moët & Chandon

Every year the Exellence Award Moët & Chandon, sponsored by Moët et Chandon, celebrates one or more internationally acclaimed actors or actresses, who, through their work and talent, have enriched the cinema with their unique contribution. Since 2004, the Locarno Festival has been honoured to thus pay tribute to Oleg Menchikov, Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, Carmen Maura, Michel Piccoli, Toni Servillo, Chiara Mastroianni, Isabelle Huppert, Charlotte Rampling, Gael García Bernal, Victoria Abril and Sir Christopher Lee, Juliette Binoche, Giancarlo Giannini and Edward Norton. In 2016 the prize was awarded to Bill Pullman.

The Best Independent Producer Award – Raimondo Rezzonico Prize

Wishing to highlight key figures in film and salute their courage and their ability to take a risk supporting auteurs, the Locarno Festival has already paid tribute with this award to the work of such renowned producers as Paulo Branco, Ruth Waldburger, Karl Baumgartner, Jeremy Thomas, the French collective Agat Films & Cie, Lita Stantic, Christine Vachon, Martine Marignac, Menahem Golan Mike Medavoy, Margaret Ménégoz, and, in 2014, Nansun Shi. The Best Independent Producer Award - Premio Raimondo Rezzonico was established in 2002 in memory of Raimondo Rezzonico, president of the event for almost twenty years. The Prize is offered by the city of Minusio.

Vision Award

The Vision Award highlights and pays tribute to creative figures from the movie industry, whose work behind the scenes has helped cinema open up to new perspectives. In 2013, the prize was given to Douglas Trumbull, master of the special effects. In 2014, the Festival awarded the Oscar prize-winner Garrett Brown, creator of the Steadicam, in 2015 Walter Murch, the triple-Oscar-winning editor and sound designer, and in 2016 the Canadian composer and conductor Howard Shore.

Premio Cinema Ticino

Prize awarded since 2009 every two years to a film personality who comes from Ticino or has been living there the past five years with an outstanding movie performance.

Leopard Club Award

Named after the supporting association of the festival, the Leopard Club Award pays tribute to someone in film whose work has left a mark on the collective imagination. In 2013, the first Leopard Club Award was given to Faye Dunaway. In 2014, it was awarded to the American actress Mia Farrow. The winners of the following awards were Andy Garcia (2015) and the Italian actress Stefania Sandrinelli (2016).

Pardo alla carriera

An acknowledgement reserved for personalities with a special career in the world of movies.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Since 2011 the prize is awarded to film personalities with an extraordinary career. Throughout the years it was presented to film legends such as Harrison Ford (2011), Alain Delon (2012), Jacqueline Bisset (2013), Armin Mueller-Stahl (2014) and Harvey Keitel (2016).

Piazza Grande Awards

Prix du Public UBS

The official jury is not the only one to hand out prizes at the festival. Every night, the audience in Piazza Grande is on jury service, voting to decide the winner of the Prix du public UBS. Previous winners of the Prix du Public UBS have included films such as Bend it like Beckham, The Syrian Bride, The Lives of Others, Monsieur Lazhar, Lore, Gabrielle, Schweizer Helden and I, Daniel Blake in 2016.

Variety Piazza Grande Award

The Variety Piazza Grande Award is awarded by a jury of several of the American trade paper's critics who attend Locarno. It goes to a film screened in the Piazza Grande programme as a world or international première. The prize recognises a film that stands out for both its artistic qualities and its potential for theatrical release. The award is intended to assist the international career of the selected film, thanks to Variety's connections with the film industry and its authority within the sector.

Swatch First Feature Award

The Prize is awarded by a jury of international critics to the first works presented in the sections concorso internazionale, concorso Cineasti del presente, Fuori concorso, Signs of Life and Piazza Grande.

Direction and Management

Artistic Directors:

Presidents:

chief operating officer:

References

  1. 1 2 "A long story... in a few words". Locarno Festival. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  2. ↑ "Piazza Grande". Locarno Festival. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  3. ↑ "George Cukor Retrospective and new selection committee at Locarno 66th". Filmfestivals.com. Retrieved 2017-07-30.
  4. ↑ "Team". Locarno Festival. Retrieved 2017-07-30.
  5. ↑ "Locarno Festival". MySwitzerland.com. Retrieved 2017-07-27.
  6. ↑ "Press Release : Carlo Chatrian, new Artistic Director. 4/09/2012". Pardo.ch.

See also

Coordinates: 46°10′11″N 8°47′46″E / 46.169623°N 8.796011°E / 46.169623; 8.796011

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