Locarno Film Festival

NAME OF FESTIVAL: Locarno Film Festival / Festival del film Locarno
SINCE: 1946
WHERE: Locarno, Switzerland
WEBSITE: www.pardolive.ch
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL: The summer of 1946 was a momentous one in the history of European cinema. In the space of ten days, two new international festivals came to life and a third was reborn. On the evening of the 23rd August, the Locarno film festival kicked off with a screening of Giacomo Gentiluomo’s O sole mio on the sloping lawn of the Grand Hotel. First launched on the Venice Lido in 1932 as part of the Biennale under the title “Esposizione d’Arte Cinematografica”, the Venetian “mostra” was re-launched on 31st August. On 1st September, the inaugural edition of the Cannes film festival began. It had been legally founded in 1939 on the eve of World War Two. The Locarno International Festival of Film began at short notice following the sudden demise of Lugano’s “Rassegna Internazionale del Film”, which ran for two years in 1944 and 1945, after Lugano’s citizens rejected the construction of an amphitheatre in a popular vote on 2nd June, 1946. The first edition was put together in less than three months.

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