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

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.