With a leopard along futuristic lines, paying homage to the magic of the cinema on film, Swiss artist Luciano Baragiola has won first place in the competition for the design of the new poster of the Locarno Film Festival. There were nearly a thousand entries, sent in by graphic designers, artists, illustrators and passionate movie fans on every continent, with an age range from 6 to 74 — confirming the intergenerational appeal and global reach of the Festival, as well as the intense engagement of the event’s community.
With the stated aim of engaging the Locarno Film Festival community ever more actively, the international competition for the new poster was launched on 26 October 2020 and attracted 901 projects entered from 85 countries, spread across all continents. The success of the initiative offers further proof of the international scope of the Festival and also of the very broad age range of community members keen to take part, with entrants aged from 6 to 74.
After a long and careful selection process made necessary by the remarkable success of the call for entries, the jury — consisting of the Festival’s management and artistic director, assisted by Michele Jannuzzi (brand consultant), Fabienne Merlet (head of marketing) and the graphic design team — made their final decision for the poster of the 74th edition of the Festival.
The winning entry for the poster came from Luciano Baragiola, a multi-disciplinary designer based in Lugano with the favon.io studio, who also collaborates with institutions and partners both in and out of Switzerland, from Lucerne to Milan. In 2018 he was actively involved in setting up the new headquarters of L’ideatorio, a science/society outreach service of the University of Italian-speaking Switzerland (USI) and since 2019 has been on the staff of the Lucerne School of Art and Design (Hochschule Design & Kunst). As well as being used on Festival posters, Baragiola’s design will also feature in promotional and information materials for the event, both digital and paper.
The winning poster design was inspired by the origins of the cinema and in particular by the brilliant underlying idea of the motion picture: that rapid succession of 24 frames per second that for over 125 years has been “fooling” the human eye and creating the illusion of motion. So the essential, futuristic lines of Bargiola’s leopard have been broken down into 24 parts, representing the film image and at the same time telling a story about where the Locarno Film Festival is headed: an event striding purposefully towards innovation and the future, but carrying with it the deep-set traces of its own origins and of film history.
The poster of the 74th edition of the Locarno Film Festival – images.
There is a tangible reward for all the entrants who responded to the challenge of building the identity of the upcoming edition together: they will receive free accreditation to Locarno74, allowing them to continue to be a part of the Festival's community.
The 74th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will take place from 4 to 14 August 2021. The Festival team is currently working, in full compliance with official health and biosecurity guidelines, towards a complete event in 2021. Should those same guidelines so require, however, the Festival reserves the option to make organizational changes which will be announced to the media and the general public in due course.
