21/05/2010

The current director of the Festival dei Popoli (Florence, Italy), Luciano Barisone, will succeed Jean Perret as head of the Visions du Réel – Nyon International Documentary Film Festival in July. This film enthusiast previously taught literature and history before focusing on film criticism and founding the Alba Film Festival.

A regular visitor at Visions du Réel, he particularly admires the place of discovery and exchange created by his predecessor: “I really like its programming and this idea of a space for speaking inspired my work at Alba and Florence. The city of Nyon is the same size as Alba, in a very pleasant setting, perfect for meetings and talking freely.”

Barisone, who finds documentary films fascinating for their plurality and informative nature – “putting an evocation into images” – has a high opinion of Swiss documentaries. He identifies three strands: “Militant films which take a political look at social classes and the role of the government (Alain Tanner, Alexander J. Seiler, Richard Dindo, Jean-Stéphane Bron and others); films by travellers, in the tradition of writer Nicolas Bouvier (Christian Frei, Ulrike Koch, Richard Dindo, etc.); and visionary films (Wolfgang Panzer, Peter Liechti, Hans-Ulrich Schlumpf, Reni Mertens and Walter Marti)”.

Believing that a festival should show films whilst helping new talents emerge, Barisone wants to break away from the traditional pitches in the form of face-to-face meetings in order to offer conditions conducive to discovering fresh perspectives.