by Nick Luthi
Two years ago, the Locarno Film Festival decided to Podcast «Futurespectives» to produce. She had the idea Production company BrandAudio. She was able to convince the festival to also rely on audio in the media mix in the future. With the podcast, the festival should remain in the conversation throughout the year. Festival sponsor UBS came on board as presenting partner. “A successful cooperation, both sides were equally convinced of its success,” recalls Darryl von Däniken, co-founder and owner of BrandAudio. The podcast started at the end of last year’s festival.
Compact and entertaining conversations
In 25 episodes greats from the film world came like Juliette Binoche, Matt Dillon or Costa-Gavras to word. Former BBC and Apple Music producer Gabby Sanderson conducted the interviews during the 2022 Locarno Film Festival. This resulted in compact and entertaining conversations of fifteen minutes to a maximum of 50 minutes about the present and future of film and culture.
The first season of “Futurespectives” started in August 2022 and ended last June. During this year’s Locarno Film Festival it was planned to record the talks for the next season with personalities from the film world present. But it did not get to that.
“The decision came as a complete surprise to us”
At the beginning of July, just a few weeks before the start of this year’s edition, the festival announced that it was “terminating the co-production partnership and contract with BrandAudio”. That wrote from Däniken in a statement on Monday. When asked by persoenlich.com, he confirmed the unilateral termination of the podcast project by the festival. “The decision came as a complete surprise to us. There were no indications that the cooperation should not be continued, »says von Däniken. On the contrary. The mutual respect was always very high. “We pulled together and saw the podcast as a joint project.”
The Locarno Film Festival does not want to comment on the termination of the partnership with BrandAudio and the end of «Futurespectives». On request from persoenlich.com, the media office announced that there was no comment on this.
In Monday’s message, Darryl von Däniken speculated about the possible reasons for the abrupt end, “that something of a certain magnitude must have happened internally in the run-up to the festival.” But he doesn’t want to speculate on exactly what that might have been.
Festival may not use name and format
Since the rights to the “Futurespectives” brand belong to both partners, BrandAudio requested that the festival not continue to use the name and format for any future podcasts. With this request they approached the newly elected festival president Maja Hoffmann, whereupon the festival confirmed that it would respect these conditions. But even in this exchange, according to von Däniken, those responsible did not give any reasons for their decision to end the cooperation.
What the parties were able to agree on: The previous episodes of the podcast will remain accessible on the festival website and the podcast platforms.
2023-08-09 17:14:03
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