Christopher Walken to Receive Grand Honorary Award at 2016 Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia
Howard Gorman
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As we promised a couple of days ago, further bounty was expected to be announced at yesterday’s Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia press conference, but news that Christopher Walken would be attending to pick up the Grand Honorary Award came much to everyone’s surprise and, of course, delight.
With more than twenty awards and forty nominations behind him, Walken will share this year’s honors with the previously announced Grand Honorary Award winner, Swedish actor Max von Sydow (also attending). Other talent who’ll be flying in to pick up awards include Bruce Campbell (Time Machine Award), Walter Koenig (Time Machine Award), Paul Schrader (Time Machine Award), Barbara Crampton (Time Machine Award) and Dolph Lundgren (Honorary Maria Award).
In addition, despite Monday’s “full” lineup announcement, festival programmer Ángel Sala went on to reveal that Swiss Army Man, the latest sensation at the Sundance 2016 Film Festival, would be competing in the Official Selection.
Be sure to check back for our coverage of the festival when it kicks off this coming October 7th.
From the Press Release:
Swiss Army Man, the latest sensation at the Sundance 2016 Film Festival, will compete in the Official Selection. The Sitges Classics section completes its lineup and is complemented with two official Festival books.
The fantasy genre is one of the fields in which Christopher Walken has always excelled. With more than twenty awards and forty nominations behind him, history will remember him for the character of Nick in Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, for which he received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1978. This year, Christopher Walken will be adding one more to this list of awards: The Grand Honorary Award from the Sitges – International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia. An honor that will be shared with the other previously announced winner of the Grand Honorary Award, Max von Sydow.
Son of a Scottish immigrant and a German immigrant, actor Christopher Walken, born in Astoria, Queens (New York) in 1943, has given life to unforgettable characters from all cinematic genres during a career spanning more than sixty years. His grandeur has made him stand out from the rest in each and every one of his characterizations, bringing to life both credible supporting characters, like in Heaven’s Gate, and main characters (The Funeral).
His film titles range from Brainstorm, the last film by director and special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull, where Walken plays Doctor Michael Brace, to the screen adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Dead Zone. He has worked under the orders of Tim Burton in Sleepy Hollow and appeared in the cult film The Prophecy. Other films like Batman Returns, Communion, The Comfort of Strangers, and Seven Psychopaths are just a few of Christopher Walken’s performances no one will ever forget.
The latest sensation from this year’s Sundance Festival, the North American Swiss Army Man, has been added to Sitges 2016 to compete in the Official Selection. Directed by the duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the film tells the story of friendship between a castaway and a somewhat flatulent dead body, respectively starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe. Swiss Army Man has caused controversy because of its exceptional courage from a stylistic and conceptual point of view.
The 49th Sitges Film Festival will pay tribute to the Trekkie universe in its Sitges Classics section, in commemoration of the saga’s 50th anniversary, and will present a small retrospective sample of Soviet fantasy films from the ’50s to the ’70s. As for Star Trek, there will be two exhibitions, the screening of films related to the saga (the documentary For the Love of Spock and the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture), the Star Trek Walk taking place on 12 October and a time Machine Award will be picked up by Walter Koenig (who played the role of Chekov). The Festival will be presenting the book written for the occasion: Donde nadie ha llegado antes (Star Trek) [Where no one has gone before]. In the book, writers like Ángel Sala himself, Jordi Sánchez Navarro, Cels Piñol, and Nieves Navarro talk about the movie saga, the live action and animated series, its origins, and its creator, Gene Roddenberry, among other topics. All this will be done entertainingly and from a new perspective, not only to the delight of ‘Trekkies’, but also for all of those newcomers who want to discover Star Trek’s adventures.
Red Planet Marx: la conquista soviética del espacio [Red Planet Marx: the Soviet conquest of space] is the title of the retrospective on Soviet science fiction that the Sitges Film Festival will be hosting this year at two of its venues. Both at the Prado Cinema and the Brigadoon Zone, you can see almost a dozen films allowing us to develop the concept of ‘space opera’, space trips and the conquest of the universe in Eastern filmmaking. Movies like Planeta Bur, Solaris, and Test Pilota Pirxa, among others, will be preceded by presentations and will have subsequent post-screenings. With the same title, Sitges 2016 will be presenting another of its official books: an overview of science fiction movies from the so-called “Eastern Bloc” following the 2nd World War, paying attention to the importance of the fantasy genre from the so-called “new cinema” to our times. Authors like Jesús Palacios, Fausto Fernández, and Jordi Ojeda, among others, have participated in the book.
Finally, it is important to highlight the collaboration and participation that the SGAE offers the Sitges Film Festival year after year and to remember that, just like every year, the SGAE in Catalonia also sponsors the Nova Autoria Awards as a part of the Festival’s Noves Visions section. Said section contains a selection of short films by students from different Catalan film and audiovisual schools, eligible for the SGAE Nova Autoria Awards for best screenplay, best direction, and best music. This year, 15 schools and universities signed up and have taken part with almost 40 projects from students, among which eleven have been chosen to participate in Sitges 2016.
The complete lineup and screening times for Sitges 2016, running from 7 to 16 October, can be consulted at the official festival website: sitgesfilmfestival.com.
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