Filmes
Jornal da Mostra
Subscribe here the 'Jornal da Mostra'
31ª Mostra > 06/08/2008
Text: Rui Martins, especially for ´Jornal da Mostra´
SWISS FESTIVAL HONORS AMOS GITAI
The 61st International Film Festival starts today in Switzerland, where there is still room for independent cinema. That is the privilege of the audience, gathered in the two big screening pavilions, with a three-thousand people capacity each, or in front of the big screen at Piazza Grande, with its 200 square meters, in the warm evenings of Ticino summer.
The strong point of Locarno is the presence of filmmakers who are free from the injunction of the big studios, making possible for the audience, something between seven and nine thousand people during the open air screenings, a glimpse upon contemporary world and cultures. It was in Locarno that Jim Jarmusch and Abbas Kiarostami were discovered, that the careers of filmmakers such as Ken Loach started and where one is aware of the social ambience in the world far from the Imperial centers of America and Europe.
The honored name this year is Amos Gitai, with the Honor Leopard for the set of his critical work, many times harshly received in Israel, his country, for dealing with the Israel-Palestine crisis. The festival will show four of Gitai’s most important films, will organize a press conference and a meeting with the audience, during which cinema will be one of the subjects, but the main topic will be the future of Israel and of the Palestinians.
Frédéric Maire, the French-Swiss who directs the Festival, has a background as a journalist and cinema enthusiast among students, having created Lanterna Magica, which talks about the seventh art to elementary and high school students, now adopted all over Switzerland. Speaking Spanish fluently, Maire doesn’t hide his attraction for Latin culture and, therefore, the Latin-American films are always present in Locarno.
This time there is a profusion of Brazilian films, even though in International competition there is only one strange and rare Portugal-Brazil co-production, by Portuguese Mario Barroso. The presence of Brazilian filmmakers, feature and short films, will give the audience the chance to have a good idea of the trends in Brazilian cinematography.
There will be screenings of the films by Cao Guimarães, also a member of the jury of Filmmakers of the Present Competition, Drifter and O Homem das Multidões, a partnership with Marcelo Gomes. There will be the filmmakers Kiko Goifman with the German-Brazilian co-production Filmefobia; Cláudio Assis with Bog of Beasts; Eduardo Coutinho, with Playing and João Salles with the widely awarded documentary Santiago. And also the shorts Dez Elefantes, by Eva Randolph, Jardim Invisível, by Roberto Bellini, Saltos by Gregório Graziosi, Sebastião - o Homem que Bebia Querosene, by Carlos Magno Rodrigues and Solidão Pública, by Daniel Aragão.
During ten days, despite the hot summer in the Swiss Ticino, many will prefer to find out what is new in cinema, before the news expected during the 65th Venice Festival. And the start will be the film Brideshead Revisited, a love story which was also a British soap-opera, set in England inbetween the two world wars, with Emma Thompson.