The legendary American filmmaker will be in Avellino for the festival founded by Pasolini: 48th Laceno d’Oro International Film Festival | December 3-10 2023 | Avellino
American director (Master Gardener, The Card Counter, First Reformed, Cat People, American Gigolo) and screenwriter (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Obsession, The Yakuza) Paul Schrader will receive “Laceno d’Oro” Lifetime Achievement Award at the 48th Laceno d’Oro International Film Festival (Avellino) during the film festival which will take place from December 3-10, at Cinema Partenio (Via Giuseppe Verdi, free admission).
The tribute will include a retrospective of his most significant works in contemporary filmmaking. Paul Schrader will also hold a masterclass open to the public to share his idea of cinema and retrace his career.
The Laceno d’Oro International Film Festival, the renowned “cinema del reale” festival founded by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1959 with the Irpinian intellectuals Camillo Marino and Giacomo D’Onofrio – to promote Irpinia and its territory with a Neorealism-inspired festival – is organized by Circolo ImmaginAzione, based in Avellino, chaired by Antonio Spagnuolo, with the artistic direction of Maria Vittoria Pellecchia, in collaboration with Aldo Spiniello, Sergio Sozzo and Leonardo Lardieri.
In recent years, Laceno d’Oro International Film Festival has hosted filmmakers such as Abel Ferrara, Alexander Sokurov, Elia Suleiman, Jia Zhangke, Marco Bellocchio, Olivier Assayas, Amir Naderi, Pedro Costa, Aleksej German Jr., Julio Bressane, Carlos Reygadas, Laurent Cantet, Franco Maresco, Paolo e Vittorio Taviani, Mario Martone, Ken Loach, Miguel Gomes, Stéphane Brizé, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and many others.
The eight-days festival will host screenings, meetings with authors, concerts, exhibitions, master classes and workshops. The program will focus on three international competitions: “Laceno d’Oro 48” for both fiction feature-films and documentary feature-films; “Occhi sulla città”, short films which explore – with utmost freedom – urban spaces, environment, and landscapes; “Spazio Campania”, a section entirely dedicated to productions within the Campania region or by Campania authors.
All the films will be judged by a special board made up of artists and professionals from film industry.
The winners will be awarded a prize of 3000 euros for the feature-films of “Laceno d'Oro 48”, a prize of 1500 euros for the short-films of “Occhi sulla città”, a special prize of 1000 euros for the best documentary feature-films, and a prize of 1000 euros for the best film of “Spazio Campania”.
The Laceno d’Oro International Film Festival is organized with the contribution of Regione Campania and the Regione Campania Film Commission, with the contribution and patronage of Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo – Ministero della Cultura, with the patronage of Provincia di Avellino and Comune di Avellino. In collaboration with Sentieri Selvaggi, Quaderni di Cinemasud, Eikon, CFCC, Afic.
Main sponsors: Confindustria Avellino, ASD Scandone, Consorzio di tutela dei vini d’Irpinia. Supporters: ACIT, Sanfilippo & Partners, Multisala Partenio, Roulette Agency, Movieplex Mercogliano, Amica Pubblicità.
Media partner Orticalab.
Biographical Notes
Director and screenwriter Paul Joseph Schrader was born in 1946, in Grand Rapids, Michigan to a strict Dutch Calvinist family. He has written and directed over thirty films. He earned his BA from Calvin College, then his M.A. from UCLA Film School. He subsequently attended the inaugural class at the American Film Institute.
After his debut as a film critic with a book that is still studied today (Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer), he burst onto the film scene with his innovative scripts, leaving a lasting mark on movies by directors such as Sidney Pollack (The Yakuza, 1974) and Brian De Palma (Obsession, 1976), including four collaborations with Martin Scorsese: Taxi Driver – which won the Palme d’Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture – Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – which premiered at the 1988 Venice Film Festival – and Bringing Out the Dead (1999).
Without giving up his activity as a screenwriter, he made his film-making debut with the drama Blue Collar (1978) – starring Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel, based on a screenplay he co-wrote with his brother Leonard, on car factory workers attempting to escape their socio-economic rut through theft and blackmail – started his career as a director halfway between research and experimentation. Later in 1978, Schrader wrote and directed the loosely autobiographical film Hardcore, starring George C. Scott, followed by the acclaimed crime drama American Gigolo (1980), starring Richard Gere, and the well received critically horror remake Cat People (1982), starring Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell.
The biographical drama Mishima. A Life in Four Chapters (1985), inspired by Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, interweaves episodes from Mishima's life with dramatizations of segments from his books. Mishima was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas as executive producers. His 1990s work included the travelers-in-Venice tale The Comfort of Strangers (1990), adapted by Harold Pinter from the Ian McEwan novel, and Light Sleeper (1992), a sympathetic story of a drug dealer struggling for a normal life. In 2005 Schrader described Light Sleeper as his "most personal" film. In 1998, Schrader won critical acclaim for the drama Affliction. The film is the story of a troubled small-town policeman (Nick Nolte), who becomes obsessed with solving the mystery behind a fatal hunting accident. Schrader's script was based on the novel by Russell Banks. The film was nominated for multiple awards including two Academy Awards for acting (for Nolte and James Coburn).
In 2019, Schrader was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the dramatic thriller First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried, which Schrader also directed, premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival and which received critical acclaim. In 2021, Schrader directed the crime drama The Card Counter, starring Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish, also premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival and widely lauded by critics. In 2022 he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival, presenting on that occasion Master Gardener (Out of Competition). He is currently working on the post-production on his latest film, Oh Canada, based on Foregone by Russell Banks, starring Richard Gere, Jacob Elordi, and Uma Thurman.
Chatelin Bruno 
