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From 12 to 13 March the PalaCinema in Locarno will host the 9th edition of the Locarno Film Festival’s spring-time literary event. This year the initiative is dedicated to the future of moving images and the expanding boundaries of the audiovisual. During the event, Italian director Michelangelo Frammartino will present the Swiss advance premiere of his latest film Il buco (The Hole, 2021), cinematography by Renato Berta. Other guests joining the debate on the new frontiers of film and audiovisual creation will include Alberto Barbera, director of the Venice Film Festival, Professor Kevin B. Lee, writer and filmmaker Bepi Vigna, and director Stefano Knuchel, whose 2021 documentary Hugo in Argentina will also be screened. The program will be enhanced by the educational and training activities for the young generations offered by Locarno Kids and the Spring Academy.
Now in its ninth edition, L’immagine e la parola prepares to look to the future with a return to the live presential format, welcoming back the public to play an active part in events at the home of the film arts in Canton Ticino, the PalaCinema in Locarno. March is to be dedicated as “month of the future” at the Locarno Film Festival, and so the regular program will be enhanced by a raft of new initiatives dedicated to the debate on the future of the audiovisual sector and how to involve the new generations.
On Saturday 12 March at 2 pm the “Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts” at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Kevin B. Lee, will hold a master class dedicated to cinema in the age of Netflix. This will be followed by a screening of the animated feature Bombay Rose by Gitanjali Rao (2019), distributed by the popular streaming service. At 6.30 pm Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival, will team up with special guest Alberto Barbera, his counterpart at the International Venice Film Festival, to discuss what the future has in store for film festivals. After the debate, the audience will be treated to the advance premiere in Switzerland of one of the most acclaimed titles from Venice 2021: Il buco (The Hole) by Michelangelo Frammartino, winner of the Special Jury Prize, photographed by Bellinzona-born master cinematographer Renato Berta. It is a film which literally sounds the depths of filmic imagery in its tale of a historic Italian potholing exhibition, and will be presented by the director together with co-writer Giovanna Giuliani. Adventure and discovery are again at the heart of the program on Sunday 13 March with the animated film Long Way North (Tout en haut du monde, by Rémi Chayé, 2015), presented as one of the Locarno Kids Screenings in collaboration with Cinemagia. Also on Sunday morning, at 10.30 am, Michelangelo Frammartino will give a master class, organized in collaboration with the CISA film school and moderated by Renato Berta, cinematographer on Il buco (The Hole). Sunday afternoon, at 4 pm, will see filmmaker Stefano Knuchel explore the language of graphic narration, in a panel conversation with Bepi Vigna, one of the creators of Italian sci-fi comic Nathan Never, entitled “The formation of an artist: Hugo Pratt before Venice”. That will be followed by a screening of Knuchel’s documentary Hugo in Argentina, the latest stage of a marvelous film journey in the steps of Italian comic book creator Hugo Pratt, whose life was portrayed by Vigna in his graphic biography La ballata di Hugo (2021).
Admission is free to all screenings and meetings with the public at the 9th edition of L’immagine e la parola and reservation is not required. The master classes are also free, but participants must register in advance online.
Access to all events in the program will be in accordance with federal guidance and rules on cinemas and events in enclosed spaces in force at the time. For further information visit bag.admin.ch .
Discover the complete program of L’immagine e la parola
Spring Academy gets under way with the workshop “Let’s make something! – Facciamo qualcosa!” organized with the CISA
The series of meetings and screenings will be enlivened by the participation of the young talents selected for the Spring Academy, the new spin-off from the Locarno Academy, organized in tandem with the CISA film school. Twelve filmmakers from around the world, picked from the hundred or so candidates who answered an international call for applicants, will be mentored by Michelangelo Frammartino in a ten-day workshop running from 11 through 20 March. This intensive bout of filmmaking training will take participants from a theoretical starting point on how to activate the viewer’s role in a work of cinema right through to completing their own short film. The resulting shorts will be screened during the 75th Locarno Film Festival (3-13 August 2022).
The line-up of participants:
Younes Ben Slimane, Caterina Biasiucci, Matilde Casari, Ben Donateo, María Silvia Esteve, Antonio Valerio Frascella, Reto Gelshorn, Maria Giménez Cavallo, Agnese Làposi, Davide Palella, Moona Pennanen and Daniel Soares.
A study grant has been awarded to Agnese Làposi by Fondazione Majid.
Profiles of the young filmmakers selected can be seen on the website of the Locarno Film Festival.
L’immagine e la parola and the Spring Academy are organized by the Locarno Film Festival and the CISA film school, in co-production with RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera, with the support of the Ticino Film Commission and invaluable backing from Swisscom, PalaCinema Locarno, Enjoy Arena, Hotel Du Lac, Hertz and Fondazione Majid.