Locarno: David Lean, Carol Reed & Powell And Pressburger Titles Set For PostWar British Cinema Retrospective 

British postwar cinema will serve as the focus of the retrospective programme at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. 

Locarno has teamed with the BFI National Archive, Cinémathèque suisse, and Studiocanal on the retrospective, curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht. 

The program will span the work of well-known British filmmakers like David Lean, Carol Reed, and Powell and Pressburger to lesser-known directors like Seth Holt and Lance Comfort. Women filmmakers working on British shores like Muriel Box, Wendy Toye, Margaret Tait, and Jill Craigie as well as American filmmakers exiled to the UK by the anti-Communist blacklist like Joseph Losey, Cy Endfield, and Edward Dmytryk will also feature. 

Digital restorations and archival prints from the BFI National Archive will be projected in Locarno. The retrospective will be accompanied by an English-language book published by Les Éditions de l’Œil, edited by Ehsan Khoshbakht, and featuring contributions from international writers. Once Locarno ends, the program will travel internationally, including the Cinémathèque suisse in August and September.

“Beloved and championed by Martin Scorsese, the postwar years of British cinema will now be systematically explored in a major retrospective in Locarno,” Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival said in a statement. “From the end of World War II to the advent of Free Cinema, this is a fertile era of filmmaking that would profoundly influence the subsequent evolution of cinema on the British Isles and elsewhere.”

James Bell, BFI National Archive Senior Curator added: “The years between the end of the war and the cultural explosions of the 1960s were turbulent ones for Britain. There were challenges at home and a changing status abroad, but they fed a rich – if too often misunderstood – period in British cinema. The BFI National Archive is delighted to be partnering with the Locarno Film Festival to present this program, which showcases many rare archival film prints preserved by the BFI. We’re excited for the films to reach new international audiences, and to be shining a spotlight on fascinating films and key figures from behind and in front of the camera. Some will be familiar, while others will be exciting discoveries.”

The 78th Locarno Film Festival will take place from 6-16 August.