This year’s honorary Pardo will go to the cult director in a ceremony on the Piazza Grande. Legendary Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky has been tapped to receive the Locarno Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award, the Pardo d’onoro, at the 69th edition of the event, which is set to run Aug. 3-13.
The creator of surrealist classics including Fando Y Lis, Santa Sangre, El Topo and The Holy Mountain will be given the award during a special ceremony at the festival’s Piazza Grande. He also will participate in an open conversation with fest attendees.
The director was once set to take on an over-the-top adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, which failed to materialize, as outlined in the successful Cannes documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. He has been a continued influence on the world of sci-fi and recently has been active in the world of graphic novels. His latest film, partially autobiographical, The Dance of Reality, was screened in Cannes in 2013.
Alejandro Jodorowsky is an artist whose work goes far beyond the boundaries of film..
“Alejandro Jodorowsky is an artist whose work goes far beyond the boundaries of film and, in keeping with the traditions of the avant-garde, makes no separation between life and the creation of art,” Locarno artistic director Carlo Chatrian said Monday in a statement.
He added: “The Festival’s bestowal of this award comes at the very moment the French-Chilean artist is making a visual autobiography in the form of one long, seamless film, a dialogue between his conception of art and his vision of reality. Awarding the Pardo d’onore to Alejandro Jodorowsky is a way to highlight poetry’s ability to go beyond the limiting horizons of reality, and give voice to the visionary and a freedom of expression which we so sorely need in this day and age.”
Previous recipients of the honor include Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Sydney Pollack, William Friedkin, Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda and, last year, Michael Cimino and Marco Bellocchio.
by Ariston Anderson
