Two-time Oscar-winning editor Pietro Scalia will be honored by the Locarno Film Festival with its Vision Award honoring technical achievements and advancements in film.
Scalia, who was born in Sicily but grew up in Switzerland and studied film at UCLA, has won Oscars for “JFK” and “Black Hawk Down.” Over the past two decades he’s collaborated closely with top directors such as Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gus Van Sant, Rob Marshall, Sam Raimi and Michael Mann. His recent work includes Mann’s upcoming “Ferrari.”
Scalia will receive the Locarno award on Aug. 3 during a ceremony on the Swiss fest’s 8,000-seat Piazza Grande, followed on Aug. 4 by an onstage conversation and screenings of two standout titles from his career: “Good Will Hunting” (1997) and “Black Hawk Down” (2001).
“In the beginning there was the editing, as Eisenstein taught us, and as Hollywood formally defined it,” said Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s artistic director in a statement praising Scalia. “In the tradition of the great film editors of Hollywood who shaped the image of classic cinema and its subsequent transformations, Pietro Scalia has revolutionized our way of thinking about how each image is joined to the next,” he added. Nazzaro further noted that “Scalia’s editing work has influenced whole generations of young filmmakers; he brought in a decisive new gaze in determining the rhythmic intervals and timing required for linking images to each other.”
Previous winners of the Locarno Vision Award include visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull; cinematographer and steadycam inventor Garrett Brown; editor Walter Murch; and composer Howard Shore (2016).
The 76th edition of Locarno will run Aug. 2-12.
