There are those who only recently started imagining cinema, and those who, conversely, have been making it for years. Within Pardi di domani, they all tell it in less than an hour, sometimes in a matter of minutes. Those works are part of the Locarno Film Festival section devoted to short films, which this year will call upon audiences 40 times. That is the number of films in the three competitions at Locarno74: 10 in the Concorso nazionale, 20 in the Concorso internazionale and 10 in the brand new Concorso Corti d’autore. Who to begin with? Radu Jude, who won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale and is coming to Locarno in August with his short film Caricaturana. A world premiere, like the other 39 films in the lineup.
“It all started with an Eisenstein essay - says Radu Jude - I read about this desire of his: ‘I dreamt of composing the consecutive phases of the gestures of the immortal French actor Frédérick Lemaître from the hundred and one poses on the hundred and one pages of the adventures of Robert Macaire. He played Macaire on the stage in the famous play L’Auberge des Adrets, and the inimitable nature of his performance was imprinted on the hundred and one lithographs of Honoré Daumier – the series Caricaturana (Les Robert Macaire) (1836).’ We added the original texts to the caricatures, allowing ourselves the freedom to use it all to comment on some current news.”
This is just one of many visions to discover in the Concorso Corti d’autore, alongside those of Bertrand Mandico (who also has a feature film screening in Concorso internazionale), Marco Bellocchio, Salomé Lamas, Yann Gonzalez, Cyril Schäublin and the other directors competing for the new Pardino d’oro offered by Swiss Life. Alongside them, in the other two competitions, we have the emerging talents, with the audience having the chance to see 30 films coming from Switzerland and the rest of the world. And on August 14, the jury consisting of Kamal Aljafari, Marie-Pierre Macia and Adina Pintilie will give the two Pardini d’oro and Pardini d’argento, offered by Swiss Life and SRG SSR, to some of them.
