News  ·  13 | 08 | 2020

Cinema Is Ageless

Locarno 2020 features the animated universe of Paul Grimault, for audiences aged 3-99

This is ageless cinema. Whichever way you look at it (and the best way is in the movie theater, like last night at the GranRex), Paul Grimault's cinema is ageless. His drawings can live in 1943, when some of them were made, and in 2020. And there's no audience who won't be allowed to see his films. Hence why yesterday's Secret Screening, Le Chien Mélomane e Le Petit Soldat: il mondo animato di Paul Grimault, was for everyone, much like today's repeat screening will be (6 PM, PalaVideo). It's magical for 3-year olds, poetic for viewers aged 34, 60 or 99.
A true genius dreamer of French animation, and the founder of the first European animation studio (Les Gémeaux, established in 1936), Paul Grimault wasn't a director, an illustrator or a writer. He is a universe. Co-created with his friend Jacques Prévert, with whom he shared inspirations and intuitions, his world is a long, ironic and poetic dream, with powerful stories, profound inventiveness, tender movements and animation worthy of a ballet at La Scala. And it will not feel strange if, in between a dog, a man with an umbrella or a tin soldier, you'll seem to notice an imaginary machine by Miyazaki, one of Fellini's illusions or a Mattotti facial expression. Or even the dream you had last night. 

 

 

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