Locarno Film Festival honours Jane Campion with the Pardo d’onore Manor, awarded to the extraordinary personalities of cinema, not only for the quality of her work, which has already won an award at Cannes for Lessons of the Piano and two Oscars (for original screenplay in 1994 with Lessons of the Piano and in 2002 for directing with The Power of the Dog), but also for her commitment to female empowerment in cinema.
From the stage set up on the Piazza Grande in Locarno, the filmmaker emphasises how the presence of women in the audiovisual sector is growing and gaining strength, thanks also to the work of directors such as Julie Ducournau, Justine Triet and Audrey Diwan. In particular, she cites Greta Gerwig for her commercial success with Barbie, proving that women in the film world are also competitive in economic terms and deserve higher budgets for their films.
Campion also spoke about her experience with the pop-up film school she set up in New Zealand with the support of Netflix, a testimony to her commitment to giving back to the artistic community what she received through free film training: an intensive course for 10 aspiring filmmakers chosen out of 300 applicants.
‘Giving back what I had had was really important to me,’ the director explained in Locarno. ‘I thought about how to help the next generation and in the end I chose this path. And it was important to me that it was free to go back to when politics in my country invested money in education. I went to a school where students received a subsidy to attend…. can you imagine? And the education I received there was crucial”.
Photo Credits: By New Zealand Government, Office of the Governor-General CC BY 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org
