Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Locarno Film Festival

Tessin in the summertime is indeed a pretty place to visit and in many respects, the perfect setting for the Locarno Film Festival.




I attended this year's festival because it was something I had been meaning to do for a long time. As part of the Open Doors event, festival goers got to see films from the francophone Sub-Saharan region of the African continent.



The whole thing left me with a mixed bag of impressions. For one thing, it was the first time I had travelled so far to take part in a film festival and it was not quite what I expected. Without a doubt, LFF is a huge monster of a machine to organise and pull off. There are films from more continents than God made and there are different styles of film to match different tastes.

If you live outside from the canton of Tessin, it is far from being the most convenient place to visit and it also happens to be a very expensive festival to attend.

On their roster is the usual slew of celebrities to give the event the extra oomph! the organisers feel the festival needs. I refer in particular to Kylie Minogue who was presenting, along with the filmmaker, Leos Carax, their film "Holy Motors". On the night (3rd August), Carax won an award, le Leopard d'honneur (the Golden Leopard) in recognition for his work as a filmmaker.



On the plus side, the LFF offered a unique opportunity to both budding and established African filmmakers a platform to showcase their work to a different, Western and rather unsuspecting audience.
It is a given that African films have much to offer but to advance more fully onto the worldwide stage (pun intended) it needs more distributorship and investment.

One film worthy of note in this category is the award-winning, gun-toting Viva Riva!



The film offers a real departure from stereotypical expectations of African films. The French-speaking Director call it a "polar" while I would in this context, translate this to mean "thriller".
It has all the graphic violence and (even more graphic) sex, romance and tragedy wrapped into one explosive package than you could expect. It also captures the heart of Kinshasa and leaves you burning for more. Yes, very err...thrilling.
See: www.vivariva.com


Check out the LFF website: www.pardolive.ch for more information.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Summer Events


The Book Fair provided a hectic week of social interraction. Paulo Coelho reminded everyone why he was such a fammous and wonderful writer (in case you didn't already know) and said he was only responsible for writing the books and not for the reader's interpretation.




Douglas Kennedy was more laid back and humble and his accented French was charming.


We will just have to see what next year offers. Maybe it will be James Patterson or John Grisham.