The heartbeat of a film depends on its editing. The Locarno Film Festival will be paying homage to one of the great practitioners of vital cinema art, Pietro Scalia, with the Vision Award Ticinomoda 2023. Born in Italy, Scalia grew up in Switzerland before moving to Hollywood and working with some of contemporary cinema’s defining filmmakers, from Oliver Stone via Ridley Scott to Bernardo Bertolucci, exalting their vision and poetics, and bringing a new sensibility to his chosen craft.

As movie fans await the release of Michael Mann’s Ferrari, the most recent title on which the renowned editor has worked, Scalia will be one of the leading lights at the 76^th edition of the Festival (2-12 August).

Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival: "In the beginning there was the editing, as Eisenstein taught us. And as Hollywood formally defined it. In the tradition of the great film editors of Hollywood who shaped the image of classic cinema and its subsequent transformations, Pietro Scalia has revolutionized our way of thinking about how each image is joined to the next. In his collaborations with Bernardo Bertolucci, Ridley Scott, Sam Raimi, Michael Bay and Gus Van Sant (among many, many others), Scalia has proved able to both adhere to and reinvent the poetics and formal research of these auteurs. Scalia’s editing work has influenced whole generations of young filmmakers, he brought in a decisive new gaze in determining the rhythmic intervals and timing required for linking images to each other. Pietro Scalia: an experimental genius of the gaze and the musicality of editing.”
 
The tribute program
The Vision Award Ticinomoda 2023 ceremony will take place on the evening of Thursday, August 3rd in Piazza Grande.

The Locarno76 program will also include screenings of two titles picked by Scalia himself from his multi-faceted filmography:
 
Good Will Hunting, Gus Van Sant – USA – 1997

Black Hawk Down, Ridley Scott – USA/UK – 2001
 
On Friday August 4th at 10.30am at the Forum @Spazio Cinema, there will also be a panel conversation featuring Pietro Scalia with the Festival audience.