ITV

Tag: Swisscom

  • French director Agnes Varda to receive the Pardo d’onore Swisscom at 67th Locarno Film Festival

    French director Agnes Varda to receive the Pardo d’onore Swisscom at 67th Locarno Film Festival

    NEW DELHI: Renowned French director Agnes Varda is set to receive the Pardo d’onore Swisscom during 67th Locarno Film Festival.

     

    The Festival is being held from 6 to 16 August and Varda will be present at the Festival to interact with her fans at a public conversation. Varda is the second woman to be awarded the Pardo d’onore, following Kira Muratova in 1994.

     

    The Festival del film Locarno’s tribute to her will be accompanied by screenings of a selection of her films: the features Cleo from 5 to 7 (Cléo de 5 ? 7, 1962), The Creatures (Les Créatures 1966), Lions Love (…and Lies) (1969), Documenteur (1981), Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi, 1985), The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, 2000) and The Beaches of Agnes (Les Plages d’Agn?s, 2008), the short film Oncle Yanco (1967), as well as the five episodes of the TV series Agn?s de ci de l? Varda (2011).

     

    After working as a theater photographer, Varda began directing in 1954 with the feature-length film La Pointe Courte, with Philippe Noiret. The film, which was edited by Alain Resnais, made an immediate impact as one of the most influential works from the French young generation whose tastes and characteristics soon became defined as the Nouvelle Vague. With a career spanning a range of techniques and styles, fiction and documentary, Varda established herself as one of the most important figures in French and world cinema.

     

    Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian said, “I am particularly delighted to welcome Agnes Varda to Locarno and be able to retrace her career in the program. Both narrator of, and witness to, so many of the events that marked the 20th century, Varda has made formal experimentation and freedom an invariable hallmark of her work. As much in her best-known films (Cléo de 5 ? 7, Sans toit ni loi) as in those that deserve rediscovery (Lions Love (…and Lies), Documenteur), in her fiction films featuring famous actors as in her documentaries (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse), Agn?s Varda reminds us that film is a creative act that implicates the subject behind the camera –or directing it – both emotionally and politically. At a Festival that aims to be the home of independent cinema, awarding the Pardo d’onore to Agn?s Varda is not only a well deserved recognition of a major figure in modern cinema but also a clear signal of a route to follow.”

     

    The Pardo d’onore, supported by Swisscom for the sixth consecutive year, is the Festival del film Locarno’s acknowledgement of a major filmmaker in contemporary cinema. Previous recipients include masters of such distinction as Samuel Fuller, Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Sidney Pollack, Abbas Kiarostami, William Friedkin, JIA Zhang-ke, Alain Tanner and, in 2013, Werner Herzog.

  • Deutsche Telecom to use Microsoft’s IPTV technology in Germany

    Deutsche Telecom to use Microsoft’s IPTV technology in Germany

    MUMBAI: Europe’s biggest telecommunications group Deutsche Telekom will use Microsoft software to power new internet-based television services it plans to offer in Germany before the end of 2006.

    The tie up will see the service launched across Deutsche Telekom’s VDSL network using a Microsoft IPTV platform. The companies have promised a range of entertainment products, including regular programming in standard and high-definition formats, as well as interactive TV, digital video recording and video on demand. The latter feature will allow viewers to access selected feature films, TV series or documentaries at the touch of a button.

    The deal cements Microsoft’s position as the leading supplier to providers of internet protocol TV, with 13 telecoms groups now installing or testing its IPTV software. It also represents a milestone for Deutsche Telekom in its bid to be one of the first telecoms groups to offer high-definition TV, voice and data services on new, ultra-fast internet lines.

    Deutsche Telecom previously had been conducting a trial of the Microsoft IPTV software. The service is planned for launch in mid 2006 in 10 major German cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Munich. Other Microsoft IPTV customers include AT&T, Telecom Italia and Swisscom.