The awards for the 2009 Open Doors Factory, the Locarno Film Festival’s co-production lab that is organised with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), were announced on Wednesday August 12. The Winners of the Open Doors Award 2009. From left: YANG Jin, YANG Qing, Isabelle Glachant, WANG Xiaoshuai The 2009 session was devoted to cinema from Greater China. 12 projects, selected out of 114 applications from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, participated in the 4...

First reports show the 62nd Festival continues to be a major attraction, despite the global economic downturnThe 62nd Locarno International Film Festival drew to a close on Saturday 15 August with a surprise concert in the Piazza Grande given by Mongolian singer Urna, following the world premiere of the film The Two Horses of Genghis Khan by Byambasuren Davaa. At the final awards ceremony a few hours earlier, the Golden Leopard went to filmmaker and writer Xiaolu GUO (UK/Germany/France) for She...

The Swisscom Leopard of Honour for the 62nd edition of the Locarno International Film Festival will be awarded to American director William Friedkin, and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) starring William L. Petersen and Willem Dafoe will screen on the Piazza Grande to mark the occasion. A masterclass will also take place at the Spazio Cinema (Forum) and is open to the public. Born in 1935 in Chicago, William Friedkin made his directorial début with Good Times (1967), a musical starring Sonny & C...

The 62nd Locarno Film Festival will screen in the official selection Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai, the latest film conceived and written by the renowned Japanese animation director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers) and directed by Mizuho Nishikubo (Legend of Heavenly Sphere Shurato, Otogi Zoshi). The film, produced by animation studio Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell, Kill Bill: Vol. 1), will be released theatrically in Japan on June 13. «We are really delighted to...

The 62nd Locarno International Film Festival is to welcome the well-known Italian theater actor and director Pippo Delbono, presenting his entire filmography. Among the latter will be a number of works never before screened and his latest full-length feature, La Paura, co-produced by Forum des Images (Paris), just completed and filmed entirely on a mobile phone. Pippo Delbono was born in Varazze, not far from the city of Savona on the Italian Riviera, in 1959. In 1987, after some years working ...

At the 62nd edition of the Locarno International Film Festival the Raimondo Rezzonico Prize 2009 for Best Independent Producer will be presented to French producer Martine Marignac. A graduate in philosophy and film aesthetics, Martine Marignac began her career as a press officer for Simon Mizrahi, with whom she worked for seven years. She has mixed with then New Wave directors such as Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer, as well as Italian filmmakers Comencini, Risi, Scola, Bellocchio and Ferreri. Mart...

2009 IFFS Europe Opening Keynote Presentation Marco Müller Director Venice International Film Festival Tuesday, April 7, 2009 8:30 am Registration Opens 9:15 am Opening Remarks by Conference Chair Christian Gaines Director of Festivals Withoutabox, a division of IMDb 9:30 am - 10:30 am Dynamic Programming   Year round programming, migrating content to the web and extending audience reach are all critical programming issues. Once your festival has t...

Research & Choices: Festival Selection and Programming Throughout its 62 year history, the Locarno International Film Festival has occupied a unique position in the landscape of the major film festivals. Every August, around 180,000 cinema-goers, 1,100 journalists, and 3,400 professionals converge on the small Swiss-Italian town of Locarno, right in the heart of Europe, which becomes the world capital of auteur cinema for eleven days. During the day, a demanding selection of fe...

DAILIES ON FEST21.COM SILVERDOCS dailies SYDNEY videos FESTROIA Dailies BOSTON: Video coverage Archive Blogging fromIFFS Europe, Palm Beach , The international Doc market at Thessaloniki, ECU, Miami - Cinequest -Fantasporto - ...

The awards for the 2008 session of the "Open Doors Factory", the Locarno International Film Festival’s co-production lab that is organised with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) were announced on Wednesday August 13.The 2008 session was devoted to Latin American cinema. 12 projects, selected from 332 submissions, participated in the workshop that took place during the Festival, whose objective is to assist their directors and producers to find co-production pa...

Locarno Film Festival, Fest21.com, CFC Media Lab and Telefilm Canada are proud to premiere our Future of Cinema Salon Series at the Locarno Film Festival. We will be hosting the Future of Cinema Panel on Digital Distribution that brings together international voices around the table, plus a special hands-on demo of some of the most innovative works coming out of Canada and Switzerland, including Late Fragment a critically-acclaimed dramatic interactive feature film which premiered last year at ...

Amos Gitai will speak at the panel on Digital Distribution at Future of Cinema Salon Locarno 2008Future of Cinema Panel on Digital Distributionin association with XDC The Hollywood Reporter and  Cineuropa.org  Saturday August 9th, 2008: Forum, 11:00AM - 12:30AM What is the current International panorama of D Cinema, how many screens.Which business models prevail in Europe, what is the status in Switzerlan?Which content from film to opera and sports in the theatres?Which new consumers’ habits...

The Locarno Film Festival will pay tribute to Youssef Chahine, the revered Egyptian auteur who passed away this weekend, with a special Piazza Grande screening of "Al Massir" (Destiny), which screened at the Swiss fest in 1997.A special screening of Al Massir (Destiny) will take place on Thursday August 7 as the second screening on the Piazza Grande –a film that was programmed at the Festival eleven years ago, at the time of its release.«We were greatly saddened at the passing away ...

A special screening of Al Massir (Destiny) will take place on Thursday August 7 as the second screening on the Piazza Grande – a film that was programmed at the Festival eleven years ago, at the time of its release.«We were greatly saddened at the passing away of Locarno’s dear friend, Youssef Chahine, commented Frédéric Maire, the Festival’s Artistic Director. This extraordinary storyteller, who ranged across film genres so brilliantly, commanded admiration also for the courage of the ...

61st Locarno Film Festival Introduction from Frédéric Maire, Artistic Director"After the festivities of the 60th anniversary, the 61st Locarno International Film Festival promises to be more lively and sassy than ever. The Festival is both streamlining - in its programming - and developing: two exhibitions, two books published, a totally revamped space for receptions and discussions around the superb Magnolia at the entrance to the Piazza, a «PardoWay» to facilitate socialising and good...

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...

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...