The Locarno Film Festival is to host a retrospective on British postwar cinema for its 78th edition which runs from August 6-16. The retrospecti
The Locarno Film Festival is to host a retrospective on British postwar cinema for its 78th edition which runs from August 6-16.
The retrospective, comprising more than 40 films, will focus on British cinema from 1945-1960, and will include classics by filmmakers including David Lean, Carol Reed, and Powell and Pressburger as well as genre titles by lesser-known filmmakers like Seth Holt or Lance Comfort.
The significant role women played in the period – in films directed by Muriel Box, Wendy Toye, Margaret Tait, and Jill Craigie – as well as the role of US filmmakers exiled by the anti-Communist blacklist – like Joseph Losey, Cy Endfield, and Edward Dmytryk – will also play a major part in the festival’s survey.
The retrospective is produced in partnership with the BFI National Archive and the Cinémathèque suisse, with the support of Studiocanal, and curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht.
The programme include digital restorations and archival prints from the collection of the BFI National Archive, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this year.
The retrospective will be accompanied by an English-language book, published by Les Éditions de l’Œil, edited by Khoshbakht.
It will travel internationally after the festival, including at the Cinémathèque suisse in August and September.
Khoshbakht said: “It’s hard to believe that one of the most refined and remarkable European national cinemas – one that also gifted some of the finest artists and technicians to Hollywood – remains so underexplored beyond its borders. British cinema made in the studio system managed to blend popular entertainment with some of the most stylistically innovative forms, elevating it to the status of art. By focusing exclusively on contemporary films (and omitting period, fantasy, and war films), we aimed to tell the story of a nation in search of its identity – sometimes dark and brooding, and at other times, as in the finest tradition of British comedies, hilarious and biting. This is a national portrait in more than 40 films.”
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