LOCARNO, Switzerland – Faye Dunaway was the main guest of honor at the Locarno Film Festival Friday, where the skies cleared just in time for an unusual double bill on the festival’s famous Piazza Grande venue. Dunaway , 72, is being honored in Locarno by a special retrospective -- Sidney Lumet’s Network was Friday’s selection from the retrospective -- a standing-room-only open-microphone conversation with film fans, the Piazza Grande screening of a montage of some of her best-known film roles, and then the presentation of the festival’s first-ever Leopard Club award. “In all my years this is the first time a festival ever created an honor just for me,” said Dunaway, who earlier in the day wowed crowds with memories of acclaimed leading men she worked with, including Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty. It was Dunaway’s first visit to Locarno, and she said it made her ponder the world’s love of cinema. “On the way over here I was thinking about what makes us love cinema so much,” Dunaway said. “I think the reason is that it combines so many different art forms.” The presentation of the Leopard Club honor -- Dunaway kissed the leopard statue when she received it -- preceded back-to-back Piazza Grande screenings of La variabile umana (The Human Factor) from Bruno Oliviero and Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong Cops.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 01:39:37 +0000