Tilda Swinton, Danny Boyle Tributes: AFI FEST 2008
AFI FEST 2008 presented by Audi, which will take place at ArcLight Hollywood from October 30 to November 9, is Los Angeles’ foremost international film festival.
Director Danny Boyle (right) and Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton (above, in Orlando), will be this year’s festival honorees. Sponsored by the Skirball Cultural Center, Boyle’s tribute event will precede a special screening of Slumdog Millionaire, which happens to be a strong contender for the 2009 Oscar race. Swinton’s tribute will feature an hour-long film clip retrospective of her career, followed by a Q&A session with the actress.
The Tribute to Tilda Swinton will take place at ArcLight Hollywood on Wednesday, November 5, 2008. The Tribute to Danny Boyle will be held two days later, on Friday, November 7.
The text below, about both Tilda Swinton’s and Danny Boyle’s careers, is from the AFI FEST’s press release:
Swinton began her career with a year at the Royal Shakespeare Company before tackling some gender-bending roles, such as the composer Mozart in Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri, and as a working class woman impersonating her dead husband during World War II, in Karges’ Man to Man.
In 1985 the actress began a professional association with gay experimental director Derek Jarman. She continued to live and work with Jarman for the next nine years, developing seven critically acclaimed films. Their alliance would produce stark turns, such as Turner-prize nominated CARAVAGGIO (1986), THE LAST OF ENGLAND (1988), THE GARDEN (1990), EDWARD II (1991), and WITTGENSTEIN (1993) until Jarman succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1994.
For the title role in ORLANDO (1992), her nobleman character lives for 400 years while changing sex from man to woman. The film, which Swinton spent years helping writer/director Sally Potter develop and finance, continues to this day to have a worldwide devoted fan following. Over the years she has preferred art to celebrity, opening herself to experimental projects with new and untried directors and mediums, delving into the worlds of installation art and cutting-edge fashion. Consistently off-centered roles in FEMALE PERVERSIONS (1996), LOVE IS THE DEVIL: STUDY FOR A PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BACON (1998), TEKNOLUST (2002), YOUNG ADAM (2003), BROKEN FLOWERS (2005) and A LONDON FERFI (2007) have only added to her mystique. Hollywood too has picked up on this notoriety and, since the birth of her twins in 1997, she has successfully moved between the deep-left-field art-house and quality Hollywood blockbusters. The thriller THE DEEP END (2001), earned her a number of critic’s awards and her first Golden Globe nomination. Swinton also delivered singular performances in THE BEACH (2000/I) with Leonardo DiCaprio, CONSTANTINE (2005) with Keanu Reeves, her Oscar-winning role in MICHAEL CLAYTON (2007) alongside George Clooney and her iconic ‘White Witch’ in THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (2005).
This year, her career momentum seems to have no limit with her turns in BURN AFTER READING and THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN soon to be followed with upcoming releases JULIA and THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.
Boyle’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE focuses on a penniless, 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who finds himself one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" But when the show breaks for the night, suddenly, he is arrested on suspicion of cheating. Determined to get to the bottom of his story, a jaded Police Inspector spends the night probing his incredible past, from his riveting tales of the slums where he and his brother survived by their wits to his hair-raising encounters with local gangs to his heartbreak over the unforgettable girl he loved and lost. When the new day dawns and the orphan returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and 60 million viewers are about to find out what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on the game show?
Danny Boyle’s first feature, SHALLOW GRAVE, earned him the Alexander Korda Award for Outstanding British Film at the BAFTAs, as well as a host of other accolades including Best Director at the San Sebastian Film Festival, The Empire Award for Best Director and Best British Film and the London Critics’ Circle Film Award for Best British Newcomer.
Boyle’s second feature, TRAINSPOTTING, is one of the highest grossing British films of all time. The critically acclaimed film won four Empire Awards including Best Director and Best Film and was nominated for a BAFTA Alexander Korda Award.
In 2002 Boyle made the smash hit horror film 28 DAYS LATER. The film earned Boyle a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.
Boyle’s other feature films include MILLIONS starring James Nesbit, Alex Etel and Lewis McGibbon, THE BEACH, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, A LIFE LESS ORDINARY, starring Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz, ALIEN LOVE TRIANGLE and SUNSHINE starring Cillian Murphy. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is his eighth international theatrically released film and recently won the People’s Choice Award at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival.
His work in television includes producing Alan Clark’s controversial ELEPHANT, and directing STRUMPET, VACUUMING COMPLETELY NUDE IN PARADISE and the series MR. WROE’S VIRGINS for which he received a BAFTA nomination. Boyle’s career started in the theatre with Howard Barker’s Victory, Howard Brenton’s The Genius and Edward Bond’s Saved, which won the Time Out Award. Boyle has also directed five productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
SAVING MARRIAGE: Q&A with Mike Roth
Douglas Fairbanks in THE GAUCHO Academy Screening
Berta Singerman in NOTHING MORE THAN A WOMAN at UCLA
Leslie Caron Salute + GIGI and LILI Screenings
Bob Hope: Thanks for the Memories
Laurence Mark, Bill Condon to Produce Oscar Show
Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer DVD Set
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