Fernando Trueba accepting Career Achievement Award from Jessica Berman | Jaie Laplante, Jessica Berman, Cristina Huete, Fernando Trueba, Charles Cohen (Cohen Media Group) | Fernando Trueba, Alina Interian (MDC Executive Director, Cultural Affairs), Jaie Laplante (MIFF executive director)
Day 8 wrap: Teutonic Tribute: The king of the night was longtime and acclaimed Spanish film director/screenwriter/producer Fernando Trueba, who received MIFF 2013’s Career Achievement Tribute Award for his life’s work and contribution to world cinema at Olympia Theater’s Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. Among his numerous awards, he has won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (Belle Époque), three Goya Awards, two Grammy Awards and four Latin Grammy Awards. Preceding the Tribute ceremony a surprise video, “Deconstructing Cinema: Trueba” was played for Mr. Trueba by local artists Erwin Georgi and Gabriel E. Pulido.
Jessica Berman, producer (Madrid, 1987, The Dancer and the Thief, Calle 54) led the lively discourse and audience Q&A before the US Premiere of Trueba’s latest masterpiece about the passions of an elderly sculptor (Jean Rochefort) and his young muse, The Artist and the Model, shot on location in France; also starring Claudia Cardinale, and marking Trueba’s record 10th appearance at MIFF,
Berman commented on Trueba’s optimistic nature and his rose-colored view of the world, prompting Trueba’s response: “I think I am so pessimistic, the only way I can live is to be optimistic”. He also mentioned the association between art and life and reminding us that “art is the air we need to breathe in order to live and that there is no life without art”.
Nicholas Bonner (director, Comrade Kim Goes Flying) | Brady Corbet (presenting Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar) | Manuel Arce (executive producer, El Super), Leon Ichaso (co-director, El Super), Orlando Jimenez-Leal (co-director, El Super)
Matteo Garrone (director, Reality) | Producer Ignácio Rey (producer, Vinyl Days) & Gabriel Nesci (director, Vinly Days) | James Cavello (producer, Amazon Gold, Margarite Almeida (executive producer, Amazon Gold)
Michael Brown (Kodak), Gabriel Nesci (director, Vinyl Days) | Rick Cikowski (editor, Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tommy Ungerer Story), Brad Bernstein (director, Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tommy Ungerer Story) | Far Out After Party at Betsy Hotel with beer provided by Stella Artois