21/06/2005

This year's Locarno Film Festival (3d-13th August) will be the last festival for its director Irene Bignardi. “I will go back to being a spectator,' said the journalist at a presentation held yesterday at the Swiss Embassy in Rome, where Bignardi, while not wishing to make a fuss about her resignation, explained it nonetheless: "I have grown-up, and it is only fair, after five years, to pass the buck and resume a normal life."

In the meantime, Bignardi was proud to announce this year's highlight: a fantastic retrospective on Orson Welles, for the twentieth anniversary of his death, and the launch of a book directed by Giorgio Gosetti (The Other Side of the Wind) which contains the original script of one of the cult director's masterpieces.

The list of titles selected to compete this year was not yet revealed. However, the names of the two directors, an Oriental and an Occidental one, who will receive a Leopard for their Life’s Work are already known: Abbas Kiarostami and Wim Wenders. The jury teems with great artists, since it includes the Italian painter Valerio Adami, the Slavic director and script-writer Enki Bilal, the Iranian actress and director Niki Karimi, the Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, and the Indian actress-director-writer Aparna Sen. The jury for the Video competition consists of the Lebanese director Danielle Arbid, the Swiss director and producer Christian Frei, the Italien filmmaker Citto Maselli, the Canadian actress Alexandra Stewart, and the American artist Laurence Weiner.

(Translated from Italian)