Critically acclaimed filmmaker Ann
Hui and iconic actress Tilda Swinton have each been awarded the
Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 77th Venice
International Film Festival (2 September - 12 September, 2020).
Accepting the award, Ann Hui declared "I am so happy to receive
this news and honored for the award! So happy that I feel I
cannot find the words. I just hope everything in the world will
turn better soon and everybody can feel again as happy as I am
in this moment."
Accepting the award, Tilda Swinton declared "This great festival
has been dear to my heart for three decades: to be honoured by
her in this way is extremely humbling. To come to Venice, this
year of all years, to celebrate immortal cinema and her defiant
survival in the face of all the challenges that evolution might
throw at her - as at us all - will be my sincere joy."
Commenting on these acknowledgments, Director Alberto Barbera
stated: "Ann Hui is one of Asia's most respected, prolific, and
versatile directors of our times; her career spans four decades
and touches every film genre. From the outset, she has been
acknowledged as one of the pivotal figures of the so-called Hong
Kong New Wave - the film movement which revolutionized Hong
Kong's movies during the 1970s and '80s, transforming the
cosmopolitan city into one of the most energetic, creative
centers of the decade. She has directed very different types of
films, from melodramas to ghost stories, from
semi-autobiographical movies to adaptations of major literary
works, without forgoing family dramas, martial arts movies, and
thrillers. She has been one of the first directors on the Hong
Kong scene to bring documentary material into fiction films.
Although she has paid attention to the commercial side of movies
and has garnered widespread success with the public, the cinema
of Ann Hui has never abandoned an auteurist approach. In her
movies, she has always shown particular interest in
compassionate and social vicissitudes, recounting - with
sensitivity and the sophistication of an intellectual -
individual stories that interweave with important social themes
such as those of refugees, the marginalized, and the elderly. In
a trailblazing fashion, through her language and her unique
visual style, not only has she captured the specific aspects of
the city and the imagination of Hong Kong, she has also
transposed and translated them into a universal perspective."
Says Festival Director Alberto Barbera: "Tilda Swinton is
unanimously recognized as one of the most original and powerful
performers to establish herself at the end of the last century.
Her uniqueness lies in her commanding and incomparable
personality, uncommon versatility, and an ability to pass from
the most radical art-house cinema to big Hollywood productions,
without ever eschewing her inexhaustible need to bring to life
unclassifiable and uncommon characters. Her every portrayal is a
fearless challenge to conventions, be they artistic or social;
the outcome of a need to put herself continuously on the line
without ever being satisfied with the results she achieves; and
the desire to explore new implications in behavior and human
emotions, which Swinton never limits herself to conveying but
instead personifies in the most surprising and challenging way.
She has worked with some of today's major directors, but above
all she is faithful to a few filmmakers, for whom she has been a
muse more than just a favorite actress. Take, for example, her
working relationship with Derek Jarman; she performed in every
film he made from 1985 until the English director's death in
1994. Or Luca Guadagnino, with whom she has made four movies,
sharing his project to bring to life an unconventional type of
cinema. In this sense, Tilda Swinton confirms herself as a star
of contemporary film par excellence, who doesn't settle for
simplicity and fashionable dictates, but instead aspires to the
impossible."
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