From war movies and westerns to noir films, screwball comedies all the way to musicals – has had them all over its first 100 years. The of the is celebrating the centenary in the Swiss town with “a tribute both to beloved classics and unheralded gems produced at the Hollywood studio between the dawn of sound and the late 1950s,” as organizers highlight online. The studio had previously had a in May, co-hosted by , chairman & CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group.
Locarno unveiled its retrospective of 40, mostly black-and-white, titles by emphasizing the importance of the studio for Hollywood history. “In 1924, the relatively small-scale motion picture company Cohn-Brandt-Cohn rebranded itself as ,” the fest explains . “This new studio would eventually feature, as its masthead, the Lady with a Torch, the Statue of Liberty-like female figure draped in the American flag that has become recognizable to film lovers everywhere.
As Columbia Pictures, the studio struck gold, producing a major string of successes and becoming, over the next decade, an integral part of the Hollywood ecosystem.” And Locarno artistic director Giona Nazzaro highlighted: “It was Columbia that offered the greatest professional opportunities to women and allowed Dorothy Arzner to make her debut behind the camera.” The festival promises a “large, multi-faceted retrospective,” curated by documentarian, film critic, and film curator , that “will attempt to disentang.