It only took three months, in 1946, to organize the first ever Locarno International Film Festival. Yet that first, daring venture – which presented films by Sergei Eisenstein, Roberto Rossellini, and René Clair – blazed a trail for years to come. From the outset, the hallmarks were an enduring commitment to auteur cinema, and a tendency to select against the tide of fashion – say, by exploring emerging cinemas, or by breaking down barriers between highbrow and lowbrow, even in times when they appeared insurmountable (for instance, when a Retrospective was dedicated to Totò in 1975). Published to mark the 75th edition of the Festival and illustrated with rare archive photographs, Locarno on / Locarno off retraces the official history of the event and reveals hidden stories from behind the scenes, with 75 anecdotes that hover between truth and legend: Marlene Dietrich exercising her contractual right to silence; Rainer Werner Fassbinder stealing a folding screen from his hotel room; Roberto Benigni talking to 10,000 people on the phone; Spike Lee and Wim Wenders frozen by stage fright in Piazza Grande; Agnès Varda doing a leopard dance… Whether backstage or in the limelight, this is a story that invariably looks to the future.