Between Politics and Economics: The Locarno Film Festival from Tourism to Cinephilia (1946-1972)

Cyril Cordoba

doi:10.6092/issn.2280-9481/14350

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Cyril Cordoba University of Fribourg

Dr. Cyril Cordoba is an historian teaching at the Fribourg University and at UniDistance (Switzerland). His first book about Swiss-China relationships during the Cold War was published in French in 2020 (Alphil) and in English in 2022 (Routledge). He contributed to Europe and China in the Cold War (2019), Transnational History of Switzerland (2020) and coedited a special issue of the historical journal Traverse about Switzerland and East Asia (2020). Since 2021, his postdoctoral project deals with the political history of the Locarno International Film Festival (1946–1981).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2280-9481/14350

Keywords:

Festival, Politics, Cinephilia, Switzerland, Anticommunism, Tourism, Industry

Abstract

Renowned today as an international hub for emerging cinema, the Locarno Film Festival (LFF) was initially founded in 1946 as a touristic attraction managed by film professionals. This article examines the LFF’s struggles to impose its cultural and artistic ambitions over the economic agenda of its main stakeholders and against the country’s strong anticommunist climate from the 1940s to the 1970s. Underlining the difficulties met by this event situated in the peripheral canton of Ticino, it sheds light on the progressive involvement of the federal state as a mediator in the conflicts between the film and the tourism industries on the one side, and the so-called cinephiles circles on the other.

Between Politics and Economics: The Locarno Film Festival from Tourism to Cinephilia (1946-1972)

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