Actors Richard Gere and Liv Ullmann to receive the Donostia Award at San Sebastian International Film Festival
The actor Richard Gere and the actress and director Liv Ullmann, will receive the Donostia Award at the 55th San Sebastian Festival. Their names are therefore added to list of other great figures from the world of cinema to have received this honorary life achievement award in San Sebastian: Gregory Peck (1986), Glenn Ford (1987), Vittorio Gassman (1988), Bette Davis (1989), Claudette Colbert (1990), Anthony Perkins (1991), Lauren Bacall (1992), Robert Mitchum (1993), Lana Turner (1994), Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve (1995), Al Pacino (1996), Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irons and Jeanne Moreau (1997), John Malkovich and Anthony Hopkins (1998), Fernando Fernán-Gómez, Vanessa Redgrave and Anjelica Huston (1999), Michael Caine and Robert de Niro (2000), Julie Andrews, Warren Beatty and Francisco Rabal (2001), Jessica Lange, Bob Hoskins, Dennis Hopper and Francis Ford Coppola (2002), Isabelle Huppert, Sean Penn and Robert Duvall (2003), Woody Allen, Annette Bening, Jeff Bridges (2004), Ben Gazzara and Willem Dafoe (2005) and Max Von Sydow and Matt Dillon (2006).
RICHARD GERE
(Sunday 23)
LIV ULLMANN
(Friday 28)
RICHARD GERE (Sunday 23)
Humanitarian, actor, and Golden Globe winner, Richard Gere is known for his roles in such films as An Officer and a Gentleman, Days of Heaven, American Gigolo, Pretty Woman, First Knight, and Primal Fear. Earlier this year, Gere starred in Lasse Hallström's critically acclaimed film The Hoax. The film is based on the true story of Clifford Irving (Gere) who sells his bogus biography of Howard Hughes to a premiere publishing house in the early 1970s.
The film co-stars Alfred Molina and Marcia Gay Harden. Additionally, this fall will see Gere grace the screen in two other releases: first, he will star in The Hunting Party, which tells the story of two journalists in post-war Bosnia. Following The Hunting Party, Gere will be seen in I’m Not There, a film that provides a view into the life and songs of the legendary Bob Dylan as told through seven-characters. The all-star cast includes Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, and Heath Ledger.
Off screen, Gere is an accomplished pianist and music writer. He is also actively involved in developing projects and has executive produced FinalAnalysis, Mr. Jones, and Sommersby.
A student and friend of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Gere, for over twenty years, has made numerous journeys throughout India, Nepal, Zanskar and Tibet, Mongolia and China. He is an accomplished photographer who has worked extensively within these regions.
His first book, Pilgrim, published in 1997 by Little, Brown and Company, is a collection of images that represent his twenty-five year journey into Buddhism. With a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the book is Gere’s personal vision of this ancient and spiritual world.
An outspoken human rights advocate, Gere has done much to draw attention to the tragedy that has been unfolding in Tibet under Chinese occupation. He is the founder of the Gere Foundation, which contributes to numerous health education and human rights projects and is especially dedicated to promoting awareness of Tibet and her endangered culture. The Foundation contributes directly to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan community-in-exile and aids in the cultural survival of the Tibetan people. In 1987 Gere was the founding chairman of the Tibet House in New York. After leaving Tibet House in New York in 1991, he became an active member of the Board of Directors of the International Campaign for Tibet based in Washington D.C., and in 1996 became Chairman. Gere has testified on Tibet’s behalf before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Congressional Human Rights Caucus, the European Parliament, and House International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee.
Gere currently lives in New York with his wife Carey Lowell and their son Homer.
As a tribute to Richard Gere, Lasse Hallström'sThe Hoax (2006) will be screened in the Zabaltegi Pearls section.
LIV ULLMANN (Friday 28)
Liv Ullmann (Tokyo, 1938) has developed one of the most intense and exacting careers, as an actress and director, in European cinema and theatre. The spontaneity and expressive strength of her face has succeeded in transmitting all of the complexity of the human being, and she has played an extremely important part in the cinema of maestro Ingmar Bergman, with whom she worked on films like Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen, 1968), Shame (Skammen, 1968), Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop, 1972), Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett atkensapp, 1973), Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte, 1975), The Serpent’s Egg (1977), Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, 1978) or the last film made by the Swedish director, Saraband (2003). She has also adapted screenplays by Bergman in two of her films as a director.
But Liv Ullmann has also stood out in her work with other directors. Her performance as Kristina in the diptych comprising Jan Troell’s The Emigrants (Utvandrama, 1971)and The New Land (Nybyggarna, 1972) earned her an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress in 1973, a distinction later repeated in 1977 with Ingmar Bergman’s Face to Face (Ansikte mot ansikte). She has been nominated five times for a Golden Globe, winning the award with The Emigrants in 1973. She gave some of her best performances in historical films such as Pope Joan (1972) and The Abdication (1974), and in dramas like Farewell Moscow (Mosca addio, 1987)and The Rosegarden (1989).
Liv Ullmann trained for the theatre in London. She made her stage debut at the Rogaland Theatre in Stavanger (Norway) and performed her first film part in 1957. On stage, Liv Ullmann has played a number of major roles in Norway, Sweden, London’s West End, Australia, Los Angeles and on Broadway. As far as her acting is concerned, she has been described as a combination of “earthly beauty and artless acting style.” Even so, she has appeared less and less on stage and screen in recent years, focusing instead on scriptwriting and film-directing.
In 1992, she wrote and directed her first feature-length film, Sofie, landing three major awards at the Montreal festival. In Kristin Lavransdatter, her second feature-length film as director, she also wrote the screenplay, adapting Sigrid Undset’s famous suite of novels to the cinema. She started collaborating with SVT Drama in 1996, when she directed Private Confessions, based on Ingmar Bergman’s script, a movie garnering several international TV and film awards. In 2000, Ullmann directed Faithless, also written by Bergman.
Liv Ullmann was a UNICEF Good Will Ambassador for twenty years. For an equally long time, she was Vice-Chairman of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which works on behalf of the refugees of the world. In 1976, she made her debut as an author, with the autobiographical book Changing. In 1984, she came out with yet another book: Choices. Both books have been translated into over twenty-four languages.
Liv Ullmann received the 1988 Award for Best Actress at San Sebastian, ex-aequo with Cipe Linkovsky, for her part in Jeannine Meerapfel's La amiga (The Girlfriend).
Her last collaboration with the maestro Ingmar Bergman, Saraband, will bring the Cold Fever retrospective to a close.
In 1986 the Festival created the Donostia Award, awarded to a great film personality in recognition for their work and career.
The first one was awarded to Gregory Peck (1986), followed by award-winners Glenn Ford (1987), Vittorio Gassman (1988), Bette Davis (1989), Claudette Colbert (1990), Anthony Perkins (1991), Lauren Bacall (1992), Robert Mitchum (1993), Lana Turner (1994), Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve (1995), Al Pacino (1996), Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irons and Jeanne Moreau (1997), John Malkovich and Anthony Hopkins (1998), Fernando Fernán-Gómez, Vanessa Redgrave and Anjelica Huston (1999), Michael Caine and Robert de Niro (2000), Julie Andrews, Warren Beatty and Francisco Rabal (2001), Jessica Lange, Bob Hoskins, Dennis Hopper and Francis Ford Coppola (2002), Isabelle Huppert, Sean Penn and Robert Duvall (2003), Woody Allen, Annette Bening and Jeff Bridges (2004), Ben Gazzara , and Willen Dafoe (2005), Max Von Sydow and Matt Dillon (2006)
