After naming Isabelle Huppert as a judge at the 81st Venice International Film Festival scheduled from August 28 to September 7, was awarded to Peter WeirAustralian director and screenwriter (Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show, Master & Commander), the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. The decision was made by the Board of Directors of the Venice Biennale, which adopted the proposal of the director of the Exhibition Alberto Barbera.
Peter Weir: «Venice and the Golden Lion are part of the imagination of our profession»
«The Venice Film Festival and its Golden Lion are part of the imagination of our profession – he comments Peter Weir -. To be rewarded for your life’s work as directors is a great honor.”
Alberto Barbera: «Peter Weir has secured a place in the firmament of great directors»
Regarding this recognition, the director Alberto Barbera underlines that «with just 13 films made over forty years, Peter Weir has secured a place in the firmament of the great directors of modern cinema. By the end of the Seventies, he had established himself as the main author of the rebirth of Australian cinema by virtue of two works, “The Machines That Destroyed Paris” and “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, the second of which would acquire him over the years cult film status. The international success of his next two films, “The Broken Years” and “The Year of Living Dangerously”, opened the doors of Hollywood cinema to him, of which he quickly became one of the main protagonists, an advocate of a cinema capable of combining reflection on personal themes and the need to address the widest possible audience”.
Barbera: «In his cinema he always addresses modern themes»
«Despite the diversity of the subjects addressed – he continues Barbera -, it is not difficult to find in his cinema, which is both audacious, rigorous and spectacular, the constant of a sensitivity that allows him to deal with eminently modern themes, such as the fascination for nature and its mysteries, the crisis of adults in consumerist societies, the difficulties of educating young people for life, the temptation of physical and cultural isolation, but also the call of adventurous impulses and the instinct of healthy rebellion”.
«Weir has always maintained his integrity»
«Celebrating the taste for storytelling and innate romanticism – he concludes Barbera – Weir succeeded in strengthening his role in the Hollywood establishment while underlining a rather clear distance with the American film industry. “Witness”, “Mosquito Coast”, “Dead Poets Society”, “Fearless”, “The Truman Show” and “Master & Commander” are the main stages of an artistic journey that has managed to preserve the its underlying integrity right down to the commercial success of the films made.”
