INTERVIEW LOCARNO Piazza Grande


Leviathan is competing for the Golden Leopard


Appointed as artistic director in 2010


— he was previously head of Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes — Pere’s three-year contract was due to end after this year’s edition of the festival. However, the board decided last summer after his sec- ond outing as artistic director to extend the contract to at least 2014. “I hope this can be seen as proof they like what I’ve been doing!” he says.


Debut prizes Now comfortably in the saddle and with festival president Marco Solari’s sup- port, Pere has introduced a number of innovations for the 65th edition of the festival, including a new $20,500 (CHF20,000) prize in the Film-makers of the Present competition — the Leopard for best new director — which has been donated by the city of Lugano. In addition, the prize money for the


main award in the section — the Golden Leopard Film-makers of the Present/ George Foundation Award — has been increased to $41,000 (CHF40,000), up 33% on last year, while Nony Geffen’s Not In Tel Aviv, Eloy Enciso’s Arriaanos and Virgil Vernier’s Orleans will be


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among the films competing for the sec- tion’s Special Jury Cine+ Award, which consists of $30,700 (CHF30,000) paid by Cine+ to the film’s French distributor for broadcast rights. Pere has created a new section enti-


tled Histoire(s) du Cinéma, alluding to the Godard film of the same name. “It is dedicated to documentaries on cinema, restored films and classics and tributes to artists who deal with cinema,” he explains. It is most apt this section should be


presenting the world premiere of Fabrice Aragno’s documentary Jean-Luc Godard, which was supervised by the idiosyn- cratic director himself. The portrait is part of a new series by Swiss Television SSR, entitled CINEMAsuisse, which is dedicated to 10 Swiss film-makers who have left their mark on the national cin- ema, including Daniel Schmid, Claude Goretta and Silvio Soldini. Other documentaries screening in


the Histoire(s) du Cinéma section include Rodney Ascher’s Room 237, about The Shining, and Joseph Rezwin’s Ben Gazzara portrait Gazzara. The section Piazza Grande, with up to


OLIVIER PERE FACTFILE


n Attended the Sorbonne University in Paris where he studied humanities.


n Joined French Cinématheque in 1995, going on to head the programme.


n Appointed artistic director of Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2004.


n Joined the Locarno Film Festival as artistic director in 2010.


8,000 viewers a night, is both the heart of the festival and its showcase. With its giant screen, one of the biggest in Europe and endowed with exceptional projection quality, the Piazza Grande every night welcomes diverse festival audiences who come together for a big cinematic event. However, there will be a note of sad-


ness to this year’s edition following the unexpected death in May of film jour- nalist and festival host/master of cere- monies Claudia Laffranchi, who was affectionately known as the ‘Face of the Piazza Grande’, at the age of 49. For the past seven years, film-makers


coming on stage to present their film to the Piazza Grande audiences had been accompanied each evening by Laf- franchi as she effortlessly switched from English, Italian, French, German and Spanish for mini-interviews with the films’ delegations before each screening. “I heard the very tragic news early one morning during the Cannes Film Festi- val,” Pere says. “It was a great shock and we miss her very much. Locarno won’t be the same this year without her.” n


s August 2012 Screen International 11 n


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