67th Locarno Film Festival
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Last Looks: The 2014 Locarno Film Festival
[Paul Dallas’ first report can be read here.] Time wasted and time well spent — a ratio every festivalgoer has to work out when gambling on what to see and miss. At Locarno this year, one had to decide whether or not to devote five hours and forty minutes to a single competition film, the equivalent of four Italian classics from the wonderful Titanus retrospective. It wasn’t easy when the former was Lav Diaz’s From What Is Before, an early frontrunner and eventual winner of the Golden Leopard, and the latter all screened on 35mm — an increasingly powerful incentive […]
by Paul Dallas on Aug 19, 2014 -
Evolution of a Filipino Filmmaker: Lav Diaz’s From What Is Before
Although Lav Diaz’s artistry is formidable, the first thing anyone ever mentions about his films is their prodigious length: the longest, 2004’s Evolution of a Filipino Family, clocks in at eleven and a half hours. Waggish aficionados refer to last year’s Norte, the End of History as his short — it’s just over four hours long. Apart from the attendant notoriety, this renders Diaz’s films extremely rare. With the exception of Norte, which was picked up for distribution in the US, UK and France, the only chance of seeing his work is at festivals and special screenings. Whenever one of […]
by Giovanni Marchini Camia on Aug 15, 2014 -
First Impressions: The 2014 Locarno Film Festival
A spinning vortex of yellow leopards could be a metaphor for the feverish mixture of exhaustion and exhilaration experienced at the Locarno Film Festival. The image was a large collage of the festival’s mascot produced by the proprietor of my B&B, which he showed to me one sleep-deprived morning, on my way to a 9 am press screening at the Kursaal Cinema. Speaking of altered states, there’s been a persistent sense of déjà vu at the festival — which is actually a good thing. Seven days into the ten-day celebration, it’s clear that the 67th edition continues its tradition as […]
by Paul Dallas on Aug 14, 2014
