DUSHANBE, February 24, 2010, Asia-Plus — Organized with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Locarno International Film Festival’s (LIFF) co-production lab “Open Doors 2010” is dedicated to assist the directors and producers of the selected projects to find co-production partners, particularly in Europe, and to be able to make their films, according to press release issued by the Swiss Cooperation Office in Tajikistan.
This year, the Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland) and SDC have decided to dedicate the Open Doors 2010 to Central Asia.
Despite the number of retrospectives organized during the course of the last two decades by Films Archives and other cultural institutions, and although there has been steady participation of talented filmmakers to various important festivals international competitions, it appears that the history as well as the cinematographic productions of Central Asia is yet to be disclosed to the outer world.
The Festival Directorate therefore perceived that it is time to take notice of this region and encourage the new generation of filmmakers by helping them developing co-productions with foreign countries, thus allowing them to integrate in the illustrious lineage forming the precedent “new waves” of the Central Asian cinematography.
Joel Chapron, consultant of the Festival and expert on the region, and Martina Malacrida, Head of Open Doors Section, will visit Dushanbe on February 27-28 in frames of their Central Asian tour. The purpose of this visit is for them to screen some works, both completed and on-going, as well as read through possible draft projects or synopsises. In order to help finalize such projects, be it fiction or documentaries, the successful directors will be invited to the Locarno Film Festival that will take place on August 4-14, 2010. The selected directors and producers will follow a program unfolding in different stages and activities: an intensive course for the presentation of the projects and one-to-one meetings with possible co-production partners. At the end of the workshop, the winning project will receive either development or production support.
The Film Festival Locarno is an international film festival held annually in the city of Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. The main feature of the festival is the open-air screening space in Piazza Grande, with room for over 8,000 spectators. The top prize is the Golden Leopard awarded to the best film in the international competition. Other awards include the Leopard of Honor for outstanding directors’ career and the Prix the Public UBS for the public choice. Throughout its history the festival has discovered new trends and launched the career of Swiss directors. In the fiction category It is one of the ten best festivals in Europe.
