The 61st International Film Festival presents
Play Forward
6 – 16 August 2008
Via Ciseri 23
6600 Locarno
Switzerland
Acting as an interface for film, video art and all other media, Play Forward is the privileged observatory for all contemporary forms of audio-visual experimentation and creation. The programme showcases intriguing, sometimes extreme works whose common denominator is that they all stand at the intersection of video art and all other arts.
Play Forward 2008 features established artists across the generations such as the American Doug Aitken, the Italians Olivo Barbieri, Maia Guarnaccia and Masbedo, the Swiss Emmanuelle Antille and Frédéric Choffat, the French Stephen Dean, Pierre Coulibeuf, Ange Leccia, Vincent Dieutre, and the Austrians Josef Dabernig and Erwin Wurm. Latin America will also feature strongly in Play Forward this year, notably the Argentine Miguel Angel Ríos and the Mexican Teresa Serrano.
This selection is the result of a significant network established by the Play Forward section in the milieu of contemporary audio-visual creation, and through collaboration with prestigious art galleries such as the Sara Meltzer Gallery, the 303 Gallery and the Florence Lynch Gallery (New York), Hotel (London) Noire Contemporary Art (Torino), Monitor (Rome), Lokal_30 (Warsaw), and several others.
Provocative French photographer Antoine d’Agata (Magnum agency) will present his film made in Japan, Aka Ana, while Lebanese filmmaker Danielle Arbid delivers a project that began life as a radio broadcast, This Smell of Sex. Renowned writer Michel Houellebecq will unveil his first feature film as a world première at Locarno: the adaptation of his novel La Possibilité d’une île (The Possibility of an Island) . An outstanding documentary, La Fura in vivo, follows Catalan theatre company Fura del Baus as they prepare a show for Beijing. Finally, Anorexia. Storia di un’immagine revisits last year’s controversial poster campaign by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani.
In another much anticipated moment, the multimedia show Marlene Kuntz vs. Fraulein Else, associating «The History of Cinema» to a more contemporary musical expression, will be accompanied by the Italian band Marlene Kuntz live orchestration of Paul Czinner’s silent movie (Germany, 1928).
For the third consecutive year, video artists, filmmakers, critics and professionals will debate relationships between film and other contemporary visual art forms at the Forum. Somewhere in between – part III. Monday, August 11th at 11.00 a.m.
Locarno International Film Festival 6 – 16 August 2008
Via Ciseri 23 – 6600 Locarno – Switzerland
phone +41 91 756 21 51 Fax +41 91 756 21 59