Ehsan Khoshbakht: Telling the Story of Columbia Pictures

Joining us this week on Locarno Meets is Ehsan Khoshbakht, curator of a major retrospective focusing on Columbia Pictures during its heyday of 1929-59. A centerpiece of the 77th Locarno Film Festival, this 44-film program redefined and recontextualized the legendary Hollywood studio during the tenure of its famously tyrannical president and co-founder: Harry Cohn. In our wide-ranging conversation, Khoshbakht spoke about the work of assembling the retrospective using Columbia’s weekly release schedules in partnership with the Sony-Columbia archive, about Cohn’s complex legacy, and about the unusual amount of freedom afforded to auteurs and women creators at the studio during its Golden Age.