The Vision Award Ticinomoda both highlights and pays tribute to someone whose creative work has contributed to renew the cinematographic imaginary.
Throughout its editions, the award has been given to masters of special effects, editors, sound designers, composers and musicians, cinematographers, and multidisciplinary artists. It is a way to pay tribute to and showcase the art of filmmaking in all its dimensions.
The Locarno Film Festival will pay tribute to Ben Burtt – legendary sound designer, editor, and voice actor behind the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and winner of four Academy Awards – with the Vision Award Ticinomoda, the prize dedicated to creatives whose work has extended the horizons of cinema.
“Ben Burtt is a key part of the Star Wars mythology. A young and precocious sound effects prodigy, he created a library of organic sounds to bring the universe of the film noises to life; these creations became inseparable from the mythology of the Lucasian saga. The list of his innovations is practically endless. For the hum of the lightsaber, he used the sound of a movie projector mixed with a cathode ray tube. To get Chewbacca's verse he combined the cries of several animals (a bear, a walrus, a lion, and others) or for the sound of spaceship doors opening and closing he repurposed the sound of the doors on the Philadelphia subway. TIE fighters flying through space combined the noises of an elephant with the sound of a race-car on wet asphalt, while blaster sounds were taken from hammer blows on the wires of a radio tower. And finally, to get R2-D2's beeps he repurposed the sound of the ARP 2600 synthesizer mixed with his voice. An Academy Award winner for effects in Star Wars, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ben Burtt is a pioneer and visionary who has fundamentally changed the way we perceive sound in cinema.”
Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director
