LOCARNO RETROSPECTIVES
production house Milkyway Image, which became a fl agship for Hong Kong cinema. Over the past 10 years, To has found acclaim on the international festi- val circuit with such fi lms as PTU, Break- ing News and Election. “During my time as head of Direc-
(Clockwise from above) Arnon Milchan; Leos Carax in Cannes with Holy Motors; Otto Preminger
tors’ Fortnight [in Cannes], I regularly travelled to Hong Kong and met John- nie,” Pere recalls. “We hit it off straighta- way and became good friends. I always tried to show one of his fi lms or produc- tions in Cannes, but we never suc- ceeded. We’ve managed to fi nd a space in his busy schedule for him to come to Locarno this year.”
Preminger, Carax recognised
Rewarding the greats T
The Locarno Film Festival will honour an eclectic range of film-makers, from Johnnie To to Otto Preminger. Martin Blaney reports
his year’s Locarno Film Festival will be something of a homecom- ing for Arnon Milchan, the recipi-
ent of the festival’s Premio Raimondo Rezzonico for best producer. Milchan was educated at the University of Geneva in Switzerland before going on to become one of the most prolifi c and successful US independent producers of the past 25 years. “Arnon Milchan is a producer I have
admired from my very beginnings as a young cinéphile,” says Locarno’s artistic director Olivier Pere about the Israel- born producer of more than 100 feature fi lms including The War Of The Roses, Pretty Woman, LA Confi dential and Mr & Mrs Smith, who will give a lecture on his work during the festival. In the producer’s honour, Locarno
will screen three of his fi lms: the restored version of Sergio Leone’s 1984 epic Once Upon A Time In America, Martin Scors- ese’s The King Of Comedy from 1983 and Terry Gilliam’s 1985 cult fi lm Brazil.
■ 16 Screen International August 2012
Milchan joins a line of established producers who have picked up the award, which was founded in 2002 in honour of the festival’s chair of 20 years, Raimondo Rezzonico, including Jeremy Thomas, Menahem Golan and most recently Mike Medavoy in 2011.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong fi lm-maker Johnnie To, whose 2009 fi lm Vengeance played in Competition at Cannes, will be honoured with a Pardo Alla Car- riera in recognition of his excep- tional contribution to cinema as a director and producer. The life- time achievement award will be presented before the European premiere of To’s latest production, the crime thriller Motorway by Soi Cheang.
A key figure in Asian cinema, To has directed some 50 fi lms and as many again to his credit as a producer. He came to wider attention in 1989 with All About Ah-Long, starring Chow Yun-Fat and in 1996 founded the independent
Otto Preminger (1905-86) is the subject of this year’s retrospective, which will show his entire body of work — a total of 40 fi lms in the best 35mm prints availa- ble — ranging from his fi rst feature fi lm made in Austria, The Great Love (1931), through film-noir masterpiece Laura (1944) and period melodrama Forever Amber (1947) to classics such as River Of No Return (1954), Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and Exodus (1960).
As with the retrospectives of Ernst Lubitsch in 2010 and Vincente Minnelli last year, screenings will be accompa- nied by discussions and a monograph on the retrospective will be published in French and English in collaboration with the Swiss Cinématheque and the festival. A documentary about Preminger by André Labarthe will have its premiere at Locarno.
The festival will bestow its Pardo d’Onore on French director Leos Carax, who made a comeback at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with Holy Motors, his fi rst fi lm since Pola X in 1999.
Pere describes Carax’s latest fi lm as “clearly already one of the best fi lms of the year, a dazzling journey that com- bines life and cinema, full of emotion and breathtaking vision”. To mark the occasion, the festival will screen all of Carax’s five features — Boy Meets Girl (1984), Bad Blood (aka The Night Is Young, 1986), The Lovers On The Bridge (1991), Pola X (1999) and Holy Motors (2012) — as well as the omnibus film Tokyo! (2008) which includes his episode, Merde.
dazzling journey Johnnie To
Other honourees include Char- lotte Rampling, Naomi Kawase
and Sarah Morris. s
www.screendaily.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20