Jane Campion, director of landmark films such as The Piano and The Power of the Dog , remembers her first inklings that she wanted to be a filmmaker. “I was at art school in Sydney in the ’70s; I went to film festivals and I saw every film that came out,” she said at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, where she received a lifetime achievement award on Friday night (Saturday AEST). New Zealand director Jane Campion receives her lifetime achievement award at Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.
Credit: AP “Cinema showed me there was an interesting culture out there and I wanted to be part of it,” she told the 8000-strong audience. “No, I was desperate to be part of it!” Her earliest goal was to make one short film that could screen before the main feature. “I didn’t think of making a feature; that was too much.
That’s the way it’s been with me. Just to go on to the next thing, a little bit more each time.” The Piano , her breakthrough success of 1993, was shown in a midnight screening on Locarno’s huge outdoor screen in the town’s cobbled piazza.
Campion, 70, says she never watches her own films. “I was wondering why I find it so difficult,” she said at an earlier press conference. Jane Campion (centre) directing Anna Paquin and Sam Neill in a scene from her 1993 film The Piano.
Credit: Publicity “I think there is such a period of intensity trying to bring them to the best evocation of themselves and I’m quite critical. So once you ge.