FILM FESTIVAL

“LACENO D’ORO” INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IS ONE OF THE MOST HISTORIC AND IMPORTANT EVENTS DEDICATED TO “CINEMA DEL REALE” IN ITALY.

BORN IN 1959 FROM A HAPPY INTUITION OF PIER PAOLO PASOLINI AND CAMILLO MARINO, IT IS TRADITIONALLY HELD IN IRPINIA.

FILM FESTIVAL

“LACENO D’ORO” INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IS ONE OF THE MOST HISTORIC AND IMPORTANT EVENTS DEDICATED TO “CINEMA DEL REALE” IN ITALY.

BORN IN 1959 FROM A HAPPY INTUITION OF PIER PAOLO PASOLINI AND CAMILLO MARINO, IT IS TRADITIONALLY HELD IN IRPINIA.

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ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

The “Laceno d’oro” International Film Festival is one of the most historic and important events dedicated to the “cinema del reale” on Italy.

Born more than half a century ago from a happy intuition of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Camillo Marino, it is traditionally held in Irpinia.

The review, since its origins, has always stood out for its international vocation and attention to social problems, for wanting to be a stimulus for debate and in-depth analysis, to the continuous discovery of the cinema “that reflects”, the one that collects awards and acclaim all over the world but it is often outside the circuits of large retailers.

Each edition fully lives up to the original mission of the Festival, with a program that involves some of the most important and awarded Italian and international authors, the screening of the most significant works of independent and research cinema, a rich series of collateral initiatives that make the very special bill, edition after edition.

For decades, the Irpinia festival has been one of the most important on the international stage, preserving the lesson of current affairs transmitted by the historical founders and entrusted to the younger generations, so that they can face today’s reality with the same lucid and visionary madness of those who, more than half century ago, it gave birth to the Laceno d’oro.

history of festival

1959 / 2017

The Laceno d’oro – first a review and then a Neorealist Film Festival – was born in 1959 thanks to the faith in their dreams of two young Irpinia intellectuals, Camillo Marino and Giacomo d’Onofrio, and the tutelary deity of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Promoted by the magazine “Cinemasud”, the film award entitled “Laceno d’Oro”, linked its fate to one of the most beautiful places in the province of Avellino. The award was created, in fact, to enhance the Laceno plateau from a tourist point of view and was intended as a recognition for the best cinematographic works inspired by Neorealism. From that year until 1988, twenty-eight editions followed one another and only in 1980 the earthquake was able to prevent its construction.

After the beginnings of Bagnoli, the Laceno d’oro moved to Avellino and its immediate surroundings, where it lived, in the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s, its most beautiful period. It would be difficult to understand the student protest in Irpinia without taking into account this significant and fruitful presence that was for hundreds of young people an authentic hotbed of cultural growth, an opportunity to open up to the universe of autonomy of thought and intellectual emancipation. Learning about the cinema of civil and social commitment, the production of Eastern European countries, the Indian and Vietnamese East, Latin America, the Third World.

Since then, the “Laceno d’oro” began to definitively identify itself as a cinematographic “Review” characterized by interesting debates at the end of each screening. The Jury included prominent names in the journalistic, cinematographic and literary world: Pier Paolo Pasolini (who, accepting the invitation of Marino and Onofrio, had given a decisive impulse to the birth of the Prize), Domenico Rea, Cesare Zavattini, Carlo Lizzani, Marcello Gatti, Lina Wertmuller, Giuliano Montaldo, Luigi Zampa, Tinto Brass and many prestigious filmmakers and intellectuals. There were numerous innovations that, year after year, enriched the Award: in 1969 a new section dedicated to documentaries was inaugurated, the “Review of the Laceno d’Oro Ridotto Pass”; on the occasion of the twenty-fourth edition, a “Minifestival for children” was created, sponsored by the Venice Film Festival, whose projections were intended for students of the various middle schools in the capital. And then again painting exhibitions and the first avant-garde theater festival. To be awarded, for their works, were already established artists but, more often, new directors and young actors. The “Laceno d’Oro” was, in fact, called the “Lucky Charm”, and it is enough to scroll through the list of winners to realize this. Just one example: some future Masters of world cinema (Antonioni, Pontecorvo, the Taviani brothers, Scola) obtained their first official recognition in Irpinia, before Venice and Cannes.

The Festival, which became such in 1975, because until then it had been characterized as an exhibition, hosted films from all over the world but favoring those from Eastern and developing countries, thus assuming an international dimension.

From that season, the Camillo Marino Prize was also created to be a direct parentage, which the ImaginAzione Film Culture Club has organized since 2001 and from which the new Laceno d’oro was reborn shortly after, with the budding also of the Giacomo d’Onofrio Award. Notable authors who from 2001 to today have received the Prize: Ettore Scola, Gillo Pontecorvo, Aurelio Grimaldi, Antonietta De Lillo, Vincenzo Marra, Ken Loach, Ken Loach, the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Marco Bellocchio, Laurent Cantet, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Olivier Assayas, Zhang-Ke Jia, in the course of exciting evenings, during which we witnessed the masterpieces of the award-winning directors.