HIFF27 will honor legendary director Brian De Palma with a Lifetime Achievement Award, along with a special screening of BLOW OUT on October 12. De Palma will also participate in a A Conversation With… with Festival co-chair Alec Baldwin.
Brian De Palma and Al Pacino on the set of SCARFACE. (Photo credit: TCD/Prod.DB)
Lifetime Achievement Award: Brian De Palma
Equally regarded as a leading member of the New Hollywood movement, the Master of the Macabre, and the heir-apparent to Hitchcock’s legacy as an unparalleled auteur of suspense filmmaking, Brian De Palma has held a singular role in American filmmaking for almost a half-century. After getting his start in the late sixties with a series of irreverent New Wave-esque satires, De Palma gained his first mainstream recognition with a run of landmark cult favorite thrillers throughout the seventies (including SISTERS and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE), culminating in the release of his first major mainstream success: 1976’s CARRIE.
Capitalizing on that film’s box-office momentum, De Palma quickly proved himself to be a master technician of genre filmmaking imbued with a trademark audacity, mixing huge outbursts of violence with a keenly aware sense of humor and provocation. Whether working within the world of SCARFACE’s 80s cocaine-fueled hysteria, BLOW OUT’s uneasy conspiracy thriller, THE UNTOUCHABLES’ prohibition-set gangster epic, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE’s brash throwback escapism, or CASUALTIES OF WAR’s stark examination of war crimes at the hands of American soldiers in Vietnam, the director created a slew of classics that still stand as watershed moments of their respective genres. Now entering his sixth decade in filmmaking, De Palma has continued to build on a body of work as much defined by its mastery of craft as by its restlessness, never content to settle on what’s come before and always keen to push himself, and his audience, out of their comfort zone.
“Brian De Palma’s filmography suggests one word: excitement. Few directors in movie history have generated the kinds of feelings found in Brian’s films,” said HIFF Co-Chairman Alec Baldwin. “Although he often worked with big stars and great writers, Brian is responsible for most of the excitement in his films.”
The 27th annual Hamptons International Film Festival will take place Columbus Day Weekend: October 10 – 14, 2019. The Festival is pleased to welcome back returning Premiere Sponsor Audi, Lead Sponsors Delta, Altour and Netflix, Signature Sponsors Douglas Elliman and JP Morgan, and Official Media Sponsors WNBC, The East Hampton Star, and Purist Magazine.
