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Locarno, 2005

SWISS EMBASSY, ROME, 20. JUNE 2005 PRESS RELEASE

THE OFFICIAL JURIES AND PRIZES OF THE 58th EDITION

The prizes of the International Competition

GOLDEN LEOPARD, Grand Prize of the city and Region of Locarno (90,000 SF to be shared equally between the director and the producer to the film) to the best film of the international competition. SPECIAL JURY PRIZE, Prize of the Cities of Ascona and Losone, (30,000SF. cash prize to be shared equally between the director and the producer) for a film that best conveys the spirit of communication between people and culture. SILVER LEOPARD, Prize of the city and Region of Locarno (30,000SF to be shared equally between the director and producer) for the second best film. SILVER LEOPARD, Prize of the city and Region of Locarno (30,000SF to be shared equally between the director and producer) for best first or second work. LEOPARD for best Actress. LEOPARD for best Actor. will be awarded by the following official Jury:

Valerio Adami – artist - Italy

Enki Bilal – screenwriter, painter and director - former Yugoslavia

Niki Karimi – actress and director – Iran

Tsai Ming Liang – director - Taiwan

Aparna Sen – actress, director and writer - India The prize of the Video Competition

GOLDEN LEOPARD VIDEO C.P. Company (sfr. 30'000.--) will be awarded by the following official Jury:

Danielle Arbid – director - Lebanon

Christian Frei – director and producer - Switzerland

Citto Maselli – director - Italy

Alexandra Stewart – actress - Canada

Laurence Weiner – artist - USA

LEOPARD OF HONOUR 2005

The Locarno Film Festival has decided this year to take the exceptional step of awarding the Leopard of Honor to two great directors, one from the West and one from the East, both illustrious representatives of diverse but nonetheless complementary ways of making films, both ambassadors of their cultures in different contexts around the globe.

The Leopard of Honor will thus be awarded on two different nights in the Piazza Grande, to a great master of European cinema, , for the blend of formal research and human passion in his films, and to a great director from the East, , whose works tell of life with the elegance of a poet and the power of a moral philosopher.

RETROSPECTIVE ORSON WELLES

Orson Welles died 20 years ago, in the early morning of 10 October 1985 at his Hollywood home, surprised by a heart attack. He was typing out shooting instructions to be used that day for THE MAGIC SHOW. His body was found hours later by his chauffeur. Soon the news was flashed around the globe: the director of CITIZEN KANE and star of THE THIRD MAN was dead.

In 1995 Oja Kodar deposited most of the film material left by Welles at his death with the Munich Filmmuseum, for conservation and collation. A conference on Orson Welles organized in Munich in 1999 provided the first opportunity to present to the public and discuss the restored films which resulted from that bequest. In 2002 the Filmmuseum organized a second conference as part of the annual symposium held by Cinema Quadrat in Mannheim for Germany’s “Kommunales Kino” arthouse theaters. At Locarno in 2005, marking the 90th anniversary of Orson Welles’ birth and the 20th anniversary of his death, the Festival will host not only the most complete retrospective so far of the director’s films, but also a daily program of workshops dealing with his work for radio, re-edited works and projects left incomplete, presenting a wide range of material never before published.

This will be an opportunity to realize the full variety and complexity of the artist’s work, as compared to the standard descriptions in film literature. Welles was a hugely curious individual who exploited all the media at his disposal, crossed boundaries and followed innovative pathways. He came from the theater, became a radio star, went to Hollywood to make movies, experimented in television and even worked with video. We can hardly imagine what he might have achieved with access to today’s digital technology. For a part of his career, Welles focused on great characters from literary history, the theater (especially Shakespeare) and real life. Despite his reluctance to blur the confines between highbrow and popular culture, at the age of 19 he published Everybody’s Shakespeare, a digest of his own edited versions of Shakespeare plays, complete with instructions for production. His aim was to make Shakespeare popular.

Another of Welles’ distinguishing marks was his love of magic and illusionism in approaching the media: he always saw himself as a performing storyteller, able to hold his listeners’ attention by the rich timbre of his voice, amazing them with his tricks. The crucial part of his work was done at the editing table, where Welles would sit for hours on end, trying and retrying the cuts which eventually made up his distinctive style of editing, one that allowed him to unite apparently irreconcilable elements and create a new film form, independent of real time and space. Welles’ work still has the ability to fascinate and surprise today because it is a reflection of the artist’s profound belief in himself, not an attempt to emulate previous models but an expression of the desire to travel new and untrodden roads. Welles was also unique because he succeeded in bridging the gap between old Hollywood and the new auteur movies of the 1960s and ‘70s. The next generation of filmmakers admired and were helped by Welles, who often became involved in their projects.

The Locarno retrospective, as well as offering the most complete and exhaustive screening of his films to date, is also a critical encounter with Orson Welles. The many experts taking part will make sure that the retrospective is not just a film season, but a chance to meet Welles himself, the man and the artist: his work, his methods, the legendary schemes that are the subject of endless anecdotes and debate. Festival goers will be able to see a wide range of material by Orson Welles on the screen for the first time ever, hear the personal accounts of people who worked with him closely and discuss the most recent views and studies of film critics and historians.

Stefan Droessler The retrospective is curated by Stefan Drössler with assistance from Bernard Uhlmann and produced thanks to the Munich Filmmuseum and the support of the Swiss National Film Archive in Lausanne.

To mark the event, the and Les Cahiers du Cinéma will publish a volume dedicated to THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, edited by Giorgio Gosetti and featuring the original screenplay of the great director’s unfinished masterpiece (translated into French by Helène Frappat), with essays by Bill Krohn, Paolo Mereghetti, André Labarthe, Stefan Droessler, Daniel Kothenshulte and an interview with Peter Bogdanovich. A special bilingual edition in English and French will be prepared for the Festival.