Jan. 29 - Claudia Cardinale, Federico Fellini, Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Luchino Visconti... These are just some of the talented actors and directors who worked with the Italian production company Titanus, a sort of national equivalent to the American Metro Goldwyn Mayer and 20th Century Fox. Titanus actually worked alongside these cinema giants in the 1960s in a number of co-productions currently celebrated at the 67th edition of the Locarno Film Festival. The last time a production company was celebrated was in 1984, for Lux. The festival's program will follow Titanus' ample offer since its origins in 1904, when it was founded by Gustavo Lombardo. Screenings will focus on the golden age of Italian cinema, from the end of the War until the 1970s, showing historic films by Fellini, Visconti, Lattuada, Olmi, Pietrangeli, Zurlini, Bava, Margheriti, Freda, Mastrocinque, and interpreted by Sordi, Mastroianni, Gassman, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale. “The idea is to tell the history of Italian cinema by looking at the best creations that came out of this 'dream factory'," says artistic director Carlo Chatrian, "looking at Titanus' productions is seeing what the people chose as their most representative films in a period when most productions were the result of genius.” The installation is the fruit of Sergio Germani and Roberto Turigliatto's collaboration. The project is financed by SwissPost and organized in collaboration with the Bologna Cinetheque - where the Titanus archives are kept - the Experimental Cinema Center, the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and the Cinémathèque suisse in Losanne. Many European and American institutions are also looking to take the program abroad: Cineteca di Bologna, Cineteca Nazionale, Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, Cinémathèque suisse, Les Cinémas du Grütli in Geneva, Filmpodium in Zurich, the Film Society Lincoln Center in New York, the American Cinematheque e theUSC School of Cinematic Arts di Los Angeles.

TITANUS

Gustavo Lombardo was 19 when he decided to leave his career as lawyer and establish in Naples in 1904 a film production company: Titanus. This was a great intuition that followed directly in the steps of the first Lumière film ever screened (in Paris at the Salon Indien del Boulevard des Capucines in 1895). Lombardo later met actrss Leda Gys, who became his wife and the most famous Italian actress of her time. Their son Goffredo, born in 1920, inherited his father's business and quickly established it as the symbol of post-war recovery. “I'm just barely younger than the company, said Goffredo Lombardi in 2004, for the centenary of the family business, but I'm finally old enough to say with pride that I lived during the golden age of Italian cinema. My father did his part, I did mine, and now it is my son Guido who will take the company into the new millennium. My father and I produced films, tofay we produce TV series. This evolution was the fruit of our ability to adapt and make difficult choice when necessary.”