• Partager

L'acteur américain va recevoir le prix “Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award”, décerné à la Mostra de Venise.

American director, screenwriter and actor Sylvester Stallone is the recipient of the “Jaeger- LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award”, the prize recently instituted by the Venice International Film Festival and organized in collaboration with Jaeger-LeCoultre, dedicated to an artist who has left his mark in contemporary cinema. The prize has previously been awarded to Takeshi Kitano, Agnès Varda and Abbas Kiarostami.

This year, the prize is intended to celebrate Sylvester Stallone’s stature as a filmmaker. Ever since the visionary opening sequence of his first film as a writer and director, “Paradise Alley” –a chase across the rooftops of New York City in the 1940s– Stallone has shown an original eye and an auteur’s determination. His is a cinema as tender and solicitous as it is ferocious and unyielding. Through the now legendary figures of Rocky and Rambo –all of whose adventures were written by Stallone– he explored both the light and the darkness of the American dream.

Even when he participates in films solely as an actor, Stallone shapes his characters with precision, creating a gallery of vivid portraits that also count among the most lucid icons of the contemporary American cinema.

“Being honored at the Venice Film Festival – says Sylvester Stallone - is something I have always hoped would become a reality and now that it’s actually happened it’s been well worth the wait”.

The Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award will be presented to Sylvester Stallone on September 12 in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido, during the closing ceremony of the 66th Venice International Film Festival (September 2-12, 2009), directed by Marco Müller and organized by the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta.

During the presentation of the award, there will be a world-premiere screening of some sequences from the new film written by, directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone, The Expendables, with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Mickey Rourke. “The Expendables - explains Stallone - is a story of heroism and the price that people pay to save others. It’s a great deal of action and human comedy as well”.

In addition, at 11 p.m. in the Sala Grande - with the support of Jaeger-LeCoultre - there will be a screening of Rambo - Director's Cut by Sylvester Stallone, about which the director also says: “I’m very happy because I wish the director’s cut had been the actual cut. The problem with releasing a film is when you revisit it a year or some later you see all the wasted possibilities that you didn’t pay attention to the first time because of a rushed schedule. The new one has a great deal more heart to go along with the physicality of the film.”

Sylvester Stallone has already attended the Mostra in Venice on two occasions, in 1999 as the star of Cop Land by James Mangold, and in 2003 as an actor in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over by Robert Rodriguez.