Locarno Dailies

Today begins an edition of the Festival that looks to the future, yet also strengthened by firm roots in the past. Which is why the Locarno Film Festival is launching the project Discutiamo, discutiamo, a journey through the Festival archives to hear the voices and ideas of outstanding guests at Locarno once again, from Jean-Luc Godard to John Waters, from Michel Piccoli to Alejandro Jodorowsky. Among these speakers is Maestro Ennio Morricone, who passed away last month. A winner of the Pardo d’onore career award in 1989 and again a welcome guest of the Festival in 2003, Morricone will be the dedicatee of a special screening of Once Upon a Time in America on 7 August at 8.30pm at the PalaVideo.

Locarno 2020 gets under way
Today sees the start of Locarno 2020 – For the Future of Films, a special edition of the Locarno Film Festival dedicated to supporting the film industry. This year’s competition The Films After Tomorrow will support productions put on hold because of the lockdown; the Pardi di domani competition, given the go-ahead despite the pandemic, will continue to support young filmmakers; and support will also go to independent movie theaters in Switzerland thanks to the initiative Closer to Life. Though Locarno 2020 is committed to the future, this will also be an edition that will not forget to look back over 70-plus years of history.

Discutiamo, discutiamo
The precious resource of the Festival archives enshrines a history of great encounters. Discutiamo, discutiamo is a project launched by the Locarno Film Festival to rediscover and enhance its archives, as part of this year’s special edition Locarno 2020 – For the Future of Films. The project, curated by Giacomo Hug together with Artistic Director Lili Hinstin, aims to recreate for the festival-going public those precious cinema encounters that are such an essential part of every Locarno summer. Starting from today, 5 August, the Locarno Film Festival website will host a section where users can rediscover, hear and see 20 remarkable encounters between the public and guests at Locarno from the world of film and the arts, stretching back over a quarter of a century. The project is named after an episode directed by another friend of the Festival, Marco Bellocchio, for the 1969 anthology film Love and Anger. Bellocchio (Pardo d’onore 2015) made his debut at Locarno in 1965 with Fists in the Pocket before going on to make the portmanteau feature, whose title perhaps translates best as We Talk and Talk (in its original context of 1968 dialectics). The full list of conversations from past Festivals is as follows:

• Round table Histoire(s) du cinéma: Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rancière, Marie-José Mondzain, Ruth Beckermann, Naum Kleiman (1995), French
• Ennio Morricone (2003), Italian
• Ermanno Olmi and Bud Spencer (2004), Italian
• Susan Sarandon (2005), English
• Architecture: Massimiliano Fuksas and Wim Wenders (2005), English
• Vogliamo anche le rose – Quali occhi per le parole delle donne: Alina Marazzi, Loredana Rotondo, Ilaria Fraioli, Alia Arasoughly, Vanessa Beecroft (2007), Italian and English
• Michel Piccoli (2007), French
• Nanni Moretti (2008), Italian
• Manga Impact: Isao Takahata, Michel Ocelot (2009), French and Japanese
• William Friedkin (2009), English
• Alain Tanner (2010), French
• Isabelle Huppert (2011), French
• Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2012), English
• Harry Belafonte (2012), English
• Leos Carax (2012), French
• Agnès Varda (2014), French
• Víctor Erice (2014), Spanish
• Lav Diaz (2014), English
• Alejandro Jodorowsky (2016), French
• John Waters (2019), English

Once Upon a Time in America 
In 2003 he won over the Festival public with his passionate arguments, in a conversation which can now be rediscovered thanks to Discutiamo, discutiamo. Just fourteen years before, in 1989, Enrico Morricone won the first Pardo d’onore career award in Festival history. Before that, in 1984, his music was dominating movie theaters around the world thanks to a film that became a landmark in cinema history, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, an extraordinary epic with a powerful cast and an unforgettable musical score. To all intents and purposes a film symphony, in which Ennio Morricone’s own remarkable compositions interplay with pieces by the Beatles, Gioachino Rossini and George Gershwin. Exactly one month after the composer’s death, the Locarno audience will have an opportunity to relive the power of images and music together, in a precious, restored 251-minute print, on Friday 7 August at 8.30 pm at the Palavideo, with a repeat screening on Tuesday 11 August at the Palacinema 1.