Stellar Red Carpet in Lucca and Viareggio (2-9 April 2017)
Oliver Stone, Willem Dafoe, Aki Kaurismaki, Olivier Assayas, Valeria Golino and Julien Temple at Lucca Film Festival e Europa Cinema 2017
Cristi Puiu, Giada Colagrande and Bruno Monsaingeon among the special guests.
Tributes, award giving ceremonies, film screenings and masterclasses for all stars present at Lucca Film Festival
Lucca, 17 February 2017 – Oliver Stone, Willem Dafoe, Aki Kaurismaki, Olivier Assayas, Valeria Golino and Julien Temple are the stars of Lucca Film Festival e Europa Cinema 2017, taking place from the 2nd to the 9th of April in the Tuscan cities of Lucca and Viareggio. The Festival will pay tribute to each of the award-winning international film stars with prize giving ceremonies, special film screenings and open masterclasses with the audience. This year the International Feature Film Contest celebrates its second edition with 14 films competing from around the world, enriched by Hors-Concour Premiers and by the well-established International Short Film Competition. A celebration of the works of directors Cristi Puiu, Bruno Monsaingeon and Giada Colagrande wraps up the 2017 edition of the Lucca Film Festival.
Tribute to Oliver Stone
Having celebrated David Lynch (2014), David Cronenberg (2015), William Friedkin and George Romero (2016), this year Lucca Film Festival honors Oliver Stone with a complete film retrospective. The three-time American Oscar winning director, screenwriter, producer and actor will be in Lucca to receive a Life Time Achievement Award and to hold a Masterclass on cinema open to the public. The complete film retrospective will trace Oliver Stone’s entire career from his debut film Seizure (1974) to the recent Snowden (2016), through unforgettable classics including Salvador (1986), Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), The Doors (1991), JFK (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994) and Nixon (1995), not to mention works such as The Hand (1981), Talk Radio (1988), Heaven and Earth (1993), U-Turn (1997), Any Given Sunday (1999), World Trade Center (2006), W. (2008), Wall Street – Money never Sleeps (2010) and Savages (2012). The American director will present his epic historical drama film Alexander (2004) based on the life of Alexander the Great featuring an all-star cast.
Aki Kaurismaki and Olivier Assayas
Great European cinema also takes center stage at Lucca Film Festival e Europa Cinema 2017 with the presence of two of the most respected contemporary filmmakers Aki Kaurismaki and Olivier Assayas. The Finnish Maestro, who won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale 2017 with his latest movie The Other Side of Hope, has directed masterpieces such as The Man without a Past, The Match Factory Girl and Le Havre. He will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and a Prize from the Fondazione Giacomo Puccini for his film Lights in the Dusk (2006), which will be screened during the festival. After the awards ceremony, Kaurismaki will engage in a conversation the audience and then present in an Italian premiere The other side of hope. French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, who was recently honored at the Cannes Film Festival, will also receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, meet the audience and present his latest film Personal Shopper that will be screened that same evening. In addition, the Lucca Film Festival will tribute Assayas with a retrospective of the French director’s films.
The cinema of Valeria Golino
Valeria Golino is an artist with a dazzling international career, who has worked alongside great Italian directors like Gabriele Salvatores, Ferzan Ozpetek, Francesca Archibugi, Emanuele Crialese, Paolo Virzi and together with iconic American directors like Sean Penn in Lone Wolf and Quentin Tarantino in Four Rooms. Golino starred with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, and directed her first feature film Honey. Valeria Golino will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and have an open dialogue with the public on her many roles as an actress, director and producer.
Tribute to Giada Colagrande
The Lucca Film Festival tribute to women and cinema is honoring director, actress and screenwriter Giada Colagrande. The Italian filmmaker, born in 1975, directed her first feature film Open my Heart in 2001 and presented it at the Venice Film Festival. In 2005, Colagrande wrote and starred in her second feature film Before It Had a Name alongside actor Willem Dafoe with whom she also collaborates in her third film A Woman. As well as working on screenplays and fiction, Giada Colagrande also focuses on documentaries as in the case of the last two dedicated to Marina Abramovic.
Tribute to Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe will be among the stars celebrated in Lucca and the festival will pay tribute to the American actor with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Dafoe started acting in the eighties and achieved international fame playing Sergeant Elias Grodin in Oliver Stone’s Platoon, special agent Alan Ward in Mississippi Burning by director Alan Parker, a controversial Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, the vampire Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire and Goblin in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. In the course of his career, Willem Dafoe has been nominated for the Golden Globe twice and has received two Oscar nominations.
Julien Temple and Punk
Julien Temple’s name is indissolubly linked to punk and rock music; and in the course of his career the British director has made numerous documentaries, fiction and video clips on the theme. In particular, Temple is the biographer and promoter of the punk movement at its birth with productions such as The Great Rock’ n ‘Roll Swindle (1980) and The Filth and the Fury (2000) featuring the Sex Pistols, with whom he was a collaborator and friend. Temple will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and meet the audience to talk about the relationship between image and music. The director of cult films such as Absolute Beginners starring David Bowie and Patsy Kensit and of music videos for Depeche Mode, Judas Priest, The Rolling Stones and Duran Duran, Julien Temple will inaugurate the Lucca Film Festival exhibition dedicated to punk and to its relationship with art and cinema in the 70s and 80s on Monday 3 April.
Cristi Puiu and Bruno Monsaingeon Masters of Film
Lucca Film Festival 2017 will dedicate a special tribute to Romanian director Cristi Puiu who with Stuff and Dough (2001) and The Death of Mr. L?z?rescu (2005) inaugurated the season of the New Romanian Cinema. Puiu will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, meet with the audience and enjoy the very first complete retrospective of his work in Italy. French director Bruno Monsaingeon crowns this edition’s parade of stars. Among the greatest musical documentary filmmakers in the world, Monsaingeon will be in Lucca to collaborate with the Istituto Luigi Boccherini on a special project. The author of documentary films on the most famous twentieth-century musicians, including Glenn Gould, Sviatoslav Richter and David Oistrakh, will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and will conduct a seminar on the relationship between image and music. During the Festival, Bruno Monsaingeon will also be honored with a film tribute.
International Feature Film Contest
The second edition of the International Feature Film Contest will feature 14 films premiering in Italy. The Chairman and Members of the Jury who will award the “Best Film” prize will be announced at a later date. The winning director will receive a sum of 3,000 Euros. One of the novelties of the 2017 edition is the creation of a University Jury made up by students of the DISCO course held at University of Pisa who will select and give the new “Best European Film” award.
Hors-Concours Premières
Lucca Film Festival 2017 also features the premiere screening in Tuscany of Personal Shopper directed by Olivier Assayas and the Italian premiere of The Other Side of Hope by Aki Kaurismaki. Both filmmakers will be present in Lucca to talk about their films. The latest work of Aki Kaurismaki is scheduled to be released in Italy on 6 April 2017 by Cinema Distribuzione di Valerio de Paolis.
International Short Film Contest
The International Short Film Contest continues to be one of the most important European showcases for experimental cinematography. The composition of the Jury that will assign the “Best Film” award and the 500 Euro prize will be announced at a later date.
Cinema Music Special Event
Among the not-to-be-missed events of the 2017 edition, the live interpretation of Yasujiro Ozu’s masterpiece Floating Weeds (1934) performed by the Luigi Boccherini Institute of Lucca in collaboration with the Maxxi Museum in Rome. A chamber-music ensemble will perform the soundtrack taking into account traditional Japanese pentatonic scales achieving oriental texture and acoustics using original instruments. Maestro Mazzoli will direct the Boccherini Institute ensemble.
360° “Super Cinema” Section
Lucca Film Festival e Europa Cinema is among the first events in Italy to film part of its activities using innovative 360° cameras. Additionally, festival enthusiasts will be able to experience 360-degree viewing thanks to the event documentation daily shots screened in Piazza Antelminelli in Lucca.
Emiliana Martinelli designs the Lifetime Achievement Awards
The Lifetime Achievement Awards that will be presented to directors and actors have been designed and created by Italian Emiliana Martinelli, the President of Martinelli Luce. Select creations of the international company are showcased in the permanent collections of major museums, such as the famous bat lamp on display at the MOMA in New York. The Lifetime Achievement Award was designed in keeping with the Lucca Film Festival and will combine the idea of light to that of cinema. Emiliana Martinelli has always played a dual role inside the company, that of entrepreneur and that of designer and art director while also being in charge of graphic communication. She is also responsible for designing the exhibition stands used by the company at the most important trade fairs in Italy and abroad.
“Effetto Cinema Notte” – Day for Night
The Effetto Cinema Notte (Day for Night) section in 2017 will extend over the entire week and for the first time hosts two competitions that will give awards in cash to the best location set design and to the best artistic performance. Effetto Cinema Notte is one of the most innovative sections of the Lucca Film Festival because it combines cinema and the performing arts, offering an expanded cinema experience that involves an audience of all ages. In recent years, the event only took place on during the Saturday evening of the festival’s closing with the city divided into different areas matched either to a film genre or to one of the great international guests. A regulation drawn up by the artistic direction details the parameters according to which – within each area – various types of public establishments are involved and that together with the Festival agree to the creation of a local set design, including the costumes for employees, dedicated to the chosen film and carried out by professionals. In addition to this, the Festival indicates the musicians, actors and dancers who will collaborate in making the theatrical setting come alive with a performance that recreates a scene from the film or evokes style and spirit. Each live performance lasts a few minutes and is repeated cyclically throughout the afternoon and on Saturday night. Every year, Lucca Film Festival e Europa Cinema organizes at least one Main Event, some Main Performances and several Special Events that are completely designed and funded by the organization and in which one or more talents of the festival are actively involved in its creation and theatrical and artistic performances, as in the case of. George Romero in 2016 and Terry Gilliam in 2015.
In 2017, the Effetto Cinema Notte section will grow significantly and start on the first day of the festival. Many of the preparations and performances will be ready, so that every night of the week during the Festival, concerts, parties and performances will be offered. The grand finale is scheduled for the evening of Saturday, 8 April during which the whole city will become an open-air film set. A unique event in Europe, which each year attracts an audience of tens of thousands of people.
The Lucca Film Festival and Europa Cinema directed by Nicola Borrelli, is one of the key events organized and sponsored by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca. The main sponsors of the event are Banca Generali Private Banking and Banca Pictet, whereas the exhibits are produced with the support of Banca Société Générale. The organization of the Lucca Film Festival e Europa Cinema is also made possible thanks to the funds made available by Funder35 and enjoys the support of Gesam Gas & Luce SpA, Istituto Luce Cinecittà S.r.l., Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lucca, Lucar Spa, Lions Club Lucca Le Mura, Il Ciocco S.p.A, MiBACT (the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism), the Region of Tuscany, the City of Lucca, the City of Viareggio, the Province of Lucca with the collaboration and co-production of the Giglio Theatre in Lucca Consociazione Nazionale donatori di sangue Fratres, Fondazione Giacomo Puccini e Puccini Museum – Casa Natale, Fondazione Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Fondazione Mario Tobino, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Martinelli Luce, CG Entertainment e Fondazione UIBI. Thanks also to Lucca Comics & Games, Trenitalia Regional Management, Unicoop Firenze and to the Degree Course in Performing Arts and Civilization Department of Communication and Forms of Knowledge at the University of Pisa, Light It Up Blue – Lucca and App18 for their collaboration.
The Lucca Film Festival and Europa Cinema is an annual event that celebrates and promotes cinematic culture. The Festival is able to engage an ever-growing public through screenings, exhibitions, conferences and performances, which range from mainstream to experimental cinema. Throughout its history, Lucca Film Festival has excelled thanks to its ambitious and well-researched programming. The Festival has paid tribute to celebrated figures in the cinema world while at the same time rediscovering other notable names and identifying up-and-coming talents. The beautiful cities of Lucca and Viareggio contribute to the Festival’s appeal, serving as the stunning backdrop to an event that has become a much awaited and not-to-be-missed happening in Italy and Europe.
Lucca Film Festival and Europa Cinema
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