On Monday 7th August the Festival will pay homage to U.S. director, screenwriter and producer Todd Haynes. His latest film Wonderstruck will be screened in company with Poison, one of the featured titles in Locarno70, the sidebar dedicated to celebrating the Festival’s 70th anniversary.
The Locarno Festival offers tribute with the Pardo d’onore Manor to American director, screenwriter and producer Todd Haynes. At the 1991 Locarno Festival there were 19 movies contending for the top award of the Pardo d’oro – and one of them was Todd Haynes’ debut feature Poison. Made after a series of eye-catching shorts, the film, based on the novels of Jean Genet, set the keynotes of the director’s style. Filmmaking is not a propaganda tool for Haynes, but it can be instrumental in discovering, understanding and telling stories about reality. Frequently preoccupied with 1950s America and its violent morality, in subsequent years Haynes has directed Julianne Moore in Safe (1995), Far from Heaven (nominated for 4 Academy Awards in 2002) and Wonderstruck (2017), and Cate Blanchett in the episodic Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There (2007) and Carol (nominated for 6 Academy Awards in 2015).
Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director of the Locarno Festival: “In his seven feature films to date Todd Haynes has shaped out an original universe in which his familiarity with U.S. and European cinema, his passion for the films of Sirk and Fassbinder, go hand in glove with a modern sensibility. His characters – often with extraordinary performances by the female leads – bring back the magic of great cinema, of art that achieves the sublimation of reality without lapsing into disenchantment. His latest, splendid film Wonderstruck is another fine example, a journey into a cabinet of curiosities where fear and desire merge in the accuracy of a twofold historical reconstruction.”
Haynes’ film Poison will be part of the sidebar Locarno70, the exclusive program of films with which Locarno will commemorate its 70th anniversary through a selection of 11 first features presented at the Festival. Over its seventy years, Locarno has had the merit and the good fortune to launch many important careers: from Éric Rohmer with Le signe du lion (1962), to Tres Tristes Tigres (1968) by Raoul Ruiz, via the ferocious irony of Marco Ferreri in El Pisito (1959) and the destabilizing family portrait in Der siebente Kontinent (1989) by Michael Haneke. The Festival has always been fertile terrain for breaking with the past or upsetting convention, as witnessed by two other milestones included in the program, Al-momia (1969) by the Egyptian Chadi Abdel Salam, in a newly restored print, and Hallelujah the Hills (1963) by Adolfas Mekas. Todd Haynes will be joined in Locarno by Aleksandr Sokurov, Catherine Breillat, Sabiha Sumar, Villi Hermann and Alina Marazzi.
The special section Locarno70 is supported by the town of Muralto.
The 70th Locarno Festival will be held from 2 to 12 August 2017.
At the following link you can download the Locarno70 Press Kit:
www.pardo.ch/pressconference
