Locarno Film Festival

French filmmaker Bruno Dumont will receive the Pardo d’onore Manor award at the 71st Locarno Festival. Dumont will be a guest at the Festival in Piazza Grande on Saturday August 4 for the world premiere of the miniseries Coincoin et les z’inhumains. Born in Bailleul in the French part of Flanders in 1958, Bruno Dumont is one of the most original directors on the international scene today. Many of his films have proved controversial during a career stretching back over two decades, in which he has focused his rigorous, austere and uncompromising gaze on the mystery that lies within the reality of daily life, meticulously exploring the question of the existence of evil and the banal forms it can take. Dumont made his directing debut at the age of 38 with his first full-length feature, La vie de Jésus (1997), shot in his own native city of Bailleul. It was an immediate success, bringing him a César nomination for best first film and also a special mention in the Caméra d’or section at Cannes, where it was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight. Dumont carried on his highly personal cinematic research in his second full-length feature L’Humanité (1999), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. In 2003 Dumont moved away from locations in Northern France for the first time to make his third film Twentynine Palms (2003), set in California. He returned to France to make Flandres (2006), which brought him his second Grand Prix at Cannes. Mystery is central to Dumont’s idea of cinema: in Hadewijch (2009) and Hors Satan (2011) he once again explored the sacred through the everyday. In 2012 Dumont made Camille Claudel 1915, on aspects of the life of the noted French sculptress, with Juliette Binoche in the title role. The film was presented at the Berlinale in 2013. Dumont began working for television with the series P’tit Quinquin (2014), which aired on ARTE. The move also brought humor into Dumont’s filmic world for the first time, a shift in genre which he repeated in his next feature film Ma Loute (2016), a blend of comedy and drama shown in competition at Cannes in 2016. The next change of tone was even more extreme, as the filmmaker tackled the challenge of a rock musical with Jeannette, l’enfance de Jeanne d’Arc (2017), based on a play by Charles Péguy. During the 71st Locarno Festival Dumont will be presenting his new miniseries Coincoin et les z’inhumains, due for theatrical release in Switzerland and screening on ARTE in September. Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Locarno Festival: “Bruno Dumont is one of those directors who best typify 21st century cinema. His films are deeply rooted in philosophical, literary and film tradition and yet are forward-looking at the same time; they are the best possible riposte to those who claim that the cinema has nothing left to discover. His films are essays on men and women, on the absurdity intrinsic to existence, but also on the eternal problem of evil. They are also exhortations not to cease thinking about such issues, even when the noise from the images all around us becomes deafening. Dumont’s presence in Locarno will provide an opportunity to look back over some of the stages in his remarkable career and also, first and foremost, to discover the sequel to the series which took the Directors’ Fortnight by storm four years ago. I can’t think of a better way for miniseries to make their Piazza Grande debut than with this offering that combines slapstick comedy with a political message.” Bruno Dumont will receive the Pardo d’onore Manor award in Piazza Grande on the evening of 4 August. The Festival tribute will also include screenings of several titles in his filmography to date. On Sunday 5 August the Festival audience will also be able to see the filmmaker in a panel discussion at the Spazio Cinema. Recipients of the Pardo d’onore award at past Festivals include Samuel Fuller, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Sydney Pollack, William Friedkin, Jia Zhang-ke, Alain Tanner, Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda, Michael Cimino, Marco Bellocchio, Alejandro Jodorowsky and, in 2017, Jean-Marie Straub and Todd Haynes. The Pardo d’onore is supported by Swiss department store chain Manor. The 71st Locarno Festival will take place from 1 to 11 August 2018.

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[caption id="attachment_25927" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] “Liberty” with Laurel & Hardy[/caption] The Locarno Festival’s major Retrospective will be dedicated to three-time Oscar winner Leo McCarey (1898 – 1969), a director who left his indelible mark not only on comedy (with Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers and Harold Lloyd) but also on classic drama (Cary Grant, Charles Laughton, Bing Crosby). The Retrospective follows on from the Festival’s tributes to other masters of the genre in recent years, such as Lubitsch, Minnelli, and Cukor. In the words of Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, this event “will be an inspiration and a stimulus for new generations of viewers and filmmakers”. McCarey learned his trade during the 1920s at the Hal Roach Studios, initially as a gag writer before directing films. Roach and McCarey were key figures in the golden age of silent comedy in America, launching the successful careers of comedians such as Charley Chase and Max Davidson, as well as the insuperable stardom of Laurel & Hardy. Determined to create a more modern style of slapstick, McCarey established his hallmarks of sophisticated writing, innovative gestures, and elegant choreography. Graduating to full-length features as the sound era dawned, McCarey became a master of the screwball comedy, launching the career of Cary Grant in The Awful Truth (1937) and helming films hailed as milestones of the genre and starring some of its biggest names: Harold Lloyd and Mae West, Charles Laughton and Eddie Cantor, plus the Marx Brothers, who chose him to direct their masterpiece Duck Soup (1933). In the late Thirties and after the war, McCarey toned down the humorous element in his work and turned increasingly to drama, in movies that ranged in subject from romance to the religious life. Once again, in his late period, McCarey brought out the finest in his stars ­– Ingrid Bergman and Paul Newman, Bing Crosby and Deborah Kerr – and also rejoined forces with Cary Grant in such memorable pictures as Good Sam (1948) and An Affair to Remember (1957). Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Locarno Festival, comments: “Dedicating a Retrospective to Leo McCarey means first and foremost paying homage to a master of a genre that today has become increasingly rare. His films were big hits at the box office but were also well received by the critics and are now recognized, somewhat belatedly, as more complex and multi-layered than simple genre pieces. It is time for McCarey’s name to be awarded the status he deserves: we are fully convinced that his art, elegance, and sense of timing will be an inspiration and a stimulus for new generations of viewers and filmmakers. Lastly, on a more personal note, this Retrospective is also a tribute to a period of our own childhood which we all lived through, but perhaps have sometimes since forgotten: laughing with Laurel & Hardy does not just offer the sweet taste of nostalgia, but will also remind us of the visionary and beneficial power that comedy has always possessed.” Curated by Roberto Turigliatto, the Retrospective will be organized in partnership with the Cinémathèque suisse and the Cinémathèque française, with additional input from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. It will be accompanied by a volume in English and French to be published by Capricci. Roberto Turigliatto, the curator of the Locarno Festival Retrospective, describes McCarey as “A man of many talents who began as the assistant to Tod Browning and became a director at the peak of the studio system, but also a secret personality still requiring critical assessment. He remains unparalleled in film history for the sublime alchemy of feelings and refined practice of comedy and melodrama that he brought to his great masterpieces such as Love Affair (1939). Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) was his personal favorite despite its failure with the public and can even be regarded as an astonishing precursor of Tôkyô monogatari (1953) by Yasujirô Ozu. The project will involve other major institutions in Switzerland and abroad, ensuring that the Retrospective will travel a circuit of prestigious venues worldwide until 2019. Partners already confirmed include: in Switzerland, the Cinémathèque suisse, Filmpodium in Zurich, Kino REX in Berne and Les Cinémas du Grütli in Geneva; in Italy, the National Cinema Museum in Turin and the I Milleocchi Festival in Trieste; in France, the Cinémathèque française. The 71st Locarno Festival will be held from August 1 to 11, 2018.

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The Locarno Festival will honor cinematographer José Luis Alcaine with the Vision Award TicinoModa, the prize dedicated to those who have used their talents to trace new perspectives in the world of film. José Luis Alcaine, noted for his strong colors and photography that highlights shade and form while remaining always believable, even at extremely high contrast, has worked with some of the most important and influential auteurs in Spanish and international filmmaking. He made five films with Pedro Almodóvar, from the cult movie Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988) to Átame!(1989), from La mala educacíon (2004) to La piel que habito (2011), as well as Volver (2006). In the 1980s he was involved in many of the films, which hallmarked the originality of Spanish cinema of the decade, from El sur (Victor Erice, 1983) to Tasio(Montxo Armendáriz, 1984), from Los paraísos perdidos (Basilio Martín Patino, 1985) to El viaje a ninguna parte (Fernando Fernán Gómez, 1986). Further fundamental collaborations in his career were those with Vicente Aranda, with whom he made a dozen films, including Amantes (1991), and, again in Spain, with Fernando Trueba (El sueño del mono loco, 1989 and Belle Epoque, 1992), with Carlos Saura (¡Ay, Carmela!, 1990 and Sevillanas, 1992) and Bigas Luna (Jamón Jamón, 1992, Huevos de oro, 1993 and La teta y la luna, 1994). Outside Spain, apart from his various forays in the U.S., Alcaine worked several times with Italian filmmakers, directing photography for Alberto Lattuada (Così come sei, 1978), Fabio Carpi (Barbablù, Barbablù, 1987) and Giovanni Veronesi (Il mio West, 1998). He is currently engaged on set for Domino, the new thriller by Brian De Palma, with whom he previously made Passion (2012), and on a new project by Asghar Farhadi, with Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz. Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director: “Cinema as seduction and entertainment, mystery and comedy (of life): the lengthy career of José Luis Alcaine is rich in just the ingredients that we try to encourage at Locarno. Film is not just storytelling but first and foremost a gaze on the world, and that world sees the light thanks to artists like Alcaine who can impress upon film – and now on digital formats – both the tints and shadows of human skin and the extraordinary work of actors and art designers. The Vision Award to Alcaine is not just a tribute to a long and successful career, but also an opportunity to meet with one of the most skilled professionals working today; a man who can both illuminate an erotic film and give a lecture on the rapport between Picasso’s painting Guernica and Frank Borzage’s A Farewell to Arms, revealing his profound awareness of film history.” José Luis Alcaine will receive the Vision Award TicinoModa in Piazza Grande on Thursday August 10. He will also be holding a Master Class on Friday August 11 at the PalaVideo at 3.30 pm. The Festival tribute will include a screening of the films La piel que habito (Pedro Almodovar, 2011), Passion (Brian De Palma, 2012), Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Pedro Almodóvar, 1988) and Belle Epoque (Fernando Trueba, 1992). In previous years the Locarno Festival has conferred the Vision Award, introduced in 2013, on Douglas Trumbull (2013), Garrett Brown (2014), Walter Murch (2015) and Howard Shore (2016). The 70th Locarno Festival will be held from August 2 to 12, 2017.

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Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody will receive the 2017 Leopard Club Award at the 70th Locarno Festival. Locarno’s salute to Adrien Brody will include a screening of the film The Pianist and a meeting of the actor with the Festival public. Brody will receive the tribute of the Piazza Grande audience and the Festival on Friday August 4th. Named after the Association which supports the Festival, the Leopard Club Award pays homage to a major film personality whose work has made a lasting impact on the collective imagination. Recipients from previous editions include Faye Dunaway (2013), Mia Farrow (2014), Andy Garcia (2015) and Stefania Sandrelli (2016). Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Locarno Festival: “With a richly varied and still flourishing career, Adrien Brody has worked with some of the great American directors, from Coppola to Wes Anderson, from Malick to Soderbergh, always displaying the adaptability and technical skills that put him at ease in a remarkable spectrum of performing registers. All the same, this is also a classic case of a single performance which won him a lasting place in movie-lovers’ hearts, not so much for the Academy Award it brought him, as for the way he brought to life a character who is both a man like all of us and the symbol of a tragedy which we must constantly recall.” In bestowing the Leopard Club Award on Adrien Brody, the Locarno Festival will recognize one of the most brilliant figures in American film, an Academy Award winner at the age of only 29. Brody gained a lasting place in the collective imagination of the movie-going public when he played composer Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist (2002), and has since demonstrated his status as one of the most versatile of actors, appreciated by filmmakers in Hollywood and beyond. Born in New York City and son of Sylvia Plachy, an artist and acclaimed photographer, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor, Brody was still a teenager when he made his acting debut in Francis Ford Coppola’s New York Stories (1989), before working with Steven Soderbergh (King of the Hill, 1993) and Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers, 1994). Shortly after, in two unforgettable pictures, Adrien Brody became the pain-stricken human face in the most dehumanized of all settings: war. His performances in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (1998) and The Pianist by Roman Polanski won over audiences by the sheer power of expression, often wordless, with which he conveyed the sufferings of being a man amid the darkness of conflict. In a career of nearly 30 years, Brody has been both popular and critically admired by his ability to interpret a remarkable variety of roles, always capturing the gaze and appreciation of audiences. He struck intimate, psychological and social notes in Ken Loach’s U.S. debut Bread and Roses (2000) and Detachment (2011) by Tony Kaye, and went brilliantly over the top for Spike Lee in Summer of Sam (1999). Undaunted by the pace and spectacular scale of King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005) and Predators (Nimród Antal, 2010), he also found a sophisticated, carefree register for director Wes Anderson, with whom he played Peter Whitman in The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and Dmitri in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Other filmmakers with whom Brody has worked include Barry Levinson (Liberty Heights, 1999), Paul Haggis (Third Person, 2013) and Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris, 2011). The 70th Locarno Festival will be held from August 2nd to 12th, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAWhVP9YHYU

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[caption id="attachment_22902" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Olivier Assayas, Yousry Nasrallah and Sabine Azéma[/caption] Olivier Assayas, Yousry Nasrallah and Sabine Azéma will be the jury presidents at the 70th Locarno Festival. The President of the International Competition jury will be French film critic, screenwriter and director Olivier Assayas, who already made his mark at the Festival in 2014 with the acclaimed Sils Maria, starring Juliette Binoche. Being one of the most highly regarded contemporary filmmakers, Assayas has made several full-length features, ranging across a variety of subjects, places and genres. As an auteur for whom formal research is tied to narrative requirements, Assayas has proved adept at always bringing out the talent of his cast. These performances have included remarkable female roles played by actresses such as Emmanuelle Béart, Maggie Cheung, Virginie Ledoyen, Connie Nielsen and Kristen Stewart. The Filmmakers of the Present jury will be presided over by a familiar face for the Festival public, Yousry Nasrallah. An assistant to Youssef Chahine, Nasrallah made his debut in 1988 with Vols d’été. He has presented several of his films at Locarno, including the touching documentary A propos des garcons, des filles et du voile (1995) and Brooks, Meadows and Lovely Faces, an entry in last year’s International Competition. Nasrallah makes films for a cinema of popular kind, highly charged with sensuality and strongly political. The President of the Pardi di domani Competition jury will be the immensely popular French film actress Sabine Azéma. Twice a winner of a César award for best actress, Azéma became something of a personal muse for director Alain Resnais, with whom she made her debut in 1983. Her performances have always been at the forefront of cinema based on research and discovery, highlighting an ideal sensibility for meeting with and responding to the work of the filmmakers of tomorrow. The 70th Locarno Festival will be held from August 2 to 12, 2017.

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French filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub will receive the Pardo d’onore Manor award at the 70th Locarno Festival on Friday, August 11.  The 70th Locarno Festival will be held from August 2 to 12, 2017. Born in France in 1933 and now resident in Switzerland after living in Germany and Italy, Jean-Marie Straub has been (re)writing cinema – in three of Switzerland’s four national languages – throughout a career that stretches back over sixty years. Much of this lifetime in film was spent with his partner in art and life, Danièle Huillet (1936 – 2006). Having learned his trade as an assistant on set to Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson, Straub joined Huillet in plowing a distinct furrow across the field of 20th century cinema, centered on the real, together with the expressive tools to show and convey it: radical, rigorous filmmaking, in which the superfluous gives way to the essential. Often featuring a non-professional cast, the ideal palette for a direct rapport with words, the work of Straub and Huillet is anti-spectacular and profoundly political, but never slips into propaganda. Following a 1963 debut with the antimilitarist short Machorka-Muff, Straub and Huillet’s first full-length film, Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (1967), clearly set a course for their future output, in which film would be, literally, the seventh art. Often “at the service” of literature, theater, music and painting, their films are powerful re-elaborations of landmark figures such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Kafka, Mallarmé, Pavese, Brecht, Engels, Cézanne, D. W. Griffith and many others, all firmly bound by a strict ethic of the gaze. In 1970 their film Les yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer, ou Peut-être qu’un jour Rome se permettra de choisir à son tour marked a definitive peak of alienation in the acting in their filmmaking, with even fiction requiring and achieving maximum adherence to the real, rejecting interpretation and with it any possible equivocation. Straub has always had close ties with Locarno, entrusting many of his premieres to the Festival audience. The many important titles presented here over his long career include his full-length debut, Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach, featured in the main program in 1968, Antigone, shown in Piazza Grande in 1992, and Kommunisten screened Fuori Concorso in 2014. Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Locarno Festival: “It is a special honor to be able to recognize the personality and achievement of Jean-Marie Straub during the 70th Festival. Not just because of the close ties between Straub and Huillet and the Locarno Festival, but above all because their films hold a unique and special place in the history of modern film and are still an undeniable influence on various directors. ‘Rigorous’ is a term that has often been used to describe their practice; watching their films again one also feels how much freedom pulses through every frame – something that is absolutely necessary to ‘digital’ filmmaking. The films of Straub and Huillet have so much to say to us: perhaps that’s why the recent retrospectives dedicated to their work, in 2016 at MoMA in New York, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, were so well received. I am especially proud that Jean-Marie Straub should be in attendance at Locarno, and I am quite sure that our audience will give him the reception that great directors of his caliber deserve.” Recipients of the Pardo d’onore award at past Festivals include Samuel Fuller, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Sydney Pollack, William Friedkin, Jia Zhangke, Alain Tanner, Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda, Michael Cimino, Marco Bellocchio and, in 2016, Alejandro Jodorowsky. From this year the Pardo d’onore is supported by Manor. Image: Jean-Marie Straub (Printemps 2010). © Diane Arques via olivierpere

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