CANNES 2019 Directors’ Fortnight
Cannes’ Carrosse d’Or goes to John Carpenter
- On 15 May, the US filmmaker will receive the prize handed out every year by the French Directors’ Association on the Croisette
US director John Carpenter will be the recipient of the Carrosse d’Or (also known as the Golden Coach) handed out by the French Directors’ Association (SRF), at the opening ceremony of the 51st Directors’ Fortnight, which will unspool from 15-25 May as an integral part of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival.
Here are a few excerpts from the letter sent to John Carpenter by the SRF’s board of directors: “Each of your films enhances the irresistible delight of staging. In each of them, the work on space, on what is off-screen, on the visible and on the invisible, is constantly renewed and regenerated in order to redefine fear. A fear that is always prone to trigger emotions in characters and actors who have now become iconic: Kurt Russell in Escape from New York or The Thing, Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, Adrienne Barbeau in The Fog, Sam Neill in In The Mouth of Madness, without forgetting Karen Allen and Jeff Bridges in Starman, one of the most moving melodramas of the 1980s. You have the clear-sightedness of a lookout. This lucidity seems to us all the more essential at a time when consumerism and political drifts have reached the dreadful climax you already condemned in Escape from L.A.. While your great soundtracks keep inspiring the French electronic music scene, we as film directors would also wish to reaffirm our love for your work through a homage we hold so dear. We would thereby thank you for your fierce sense of humour, for the plastic strength of your films, their frenzied imagination and amazing wisdom.”
Intended to reward a filmmaker chosen for the pioneering qualities of their films, their boldness, and the rigour of their direction and production, the Carrosse d’Or (which was first handed out in 2002) has, in the past, been awarded to Jacques Rozier, Clint Eastwood, Nanni Moretti, Ousmane Sembene, David Cronenberg, Alain Cavalier, Jim Jarmusch, Naomi Kawase, Agnès Varda, Jafar Panahi, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Jane Campion, Alain Resnais, Jia Zhangke, Aki Kaurismäki, Werner Herzog and Martin Scorsese.
(Translated from French)
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