Once upon a time there was American cinema. A cinema made of codes and faces – something that had always resembled cinema, full stop. It has been a long time since – the days when some cinephiles still wrote down names such as Steve Carver and Joseph Zito. Ida Red, starring the magnificent Melissa Leo and Frank Grillo (one of the few really unmistakable faces of recent years), belongs in a certain idea of ‘American’ cinema. A cinema that smells like a western, and likes very dark side streets. A cinema that has stayed intact since the era of Republic and RKO. Everything changes, but “The Song Remains the Same,” as Led Zeppelin would have it. Someone who, instead, has always reinvented her work is our Premio Cinema Ticino Sonia Peng, an excellence for Ticino who made her way in Cinecittà and designed sets such as in Marco Risi’s Fort Apache Napoli (2009), starring the dear departed Libero De Rienzo. We’ve run out of space now, but you know that, as usual, there’s a whole program to be discovered at the Locarno Film Festival.
Giona A. Nazzaro
