Kevin Costner’s 1990 Western “Dances With Wolves,” about an American Civil War soldier who forges a relationship with a group of Lakota Indians, is getting a new 4K restoration that will launch at the upcoming Locarno Film Festival.
The cult classic, which earned Costner the best director prize at the 1991 Oscars, along with six other Academy Awards, will screen on Aug. 7 on the giant screen of the Swiss lakeside fest’s large outdoor Piazza Grande venue as part of its Histoire(s) du Cinema section. The film’s restored director’s cut is a nearly four-hour extended edition that incorporates over half an hour of previously unseen additional material. “Dances With Wolves” has been restored by Zurich-based laboratory Cinegrell in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival through its Locarno Heritage project and the film’s international sales agent, K5 International.
“Costner’s western epic, which won seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, helped redefine the western at the turn of the 1990s and drew global attention to the historical plight of Indigenous peoples on the American continent,” the Locarno fest said in a statement.
Pioneering Senegalese director and actress Safi Faye’s “Letter From My Village” (1975), that has also been newly restored by Cinegrell, the Locarno Heritage project, and its rights holder, Arsenal FilmInstitut, will also screen in the section. “Recognized as the first feature film by a woman from sub-Saharan Africa to receive commercial distribution, ‘Letter from My Village’ is set in the Serer region of rural Senegal and follows a young couple whose plans to marry are thwarted by drought and the precarious conditions of village life,” according to the Locarno statement.
