La Biennale di Venezia and Cartier just announced that the legendary American director, writer and producer Walter Hill (The Warriors, 48 Hrs., Last Man Standing) will be the recipient of the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award of the 79th Venice International Film Festival which will take place from August 31st – September 10th, 2022. The award is dedicated to a personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry.
The award ceremony for Walter Hill will take place on Tuesday, September 6th, in the Sala Grande (Palazzo del Cinema) at 9.45 pm, before the screening Out of Competition of his new film, Dead For A Dollar (USA, Canada, 114') starring Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Rachel Brosnahan, and Benjamin Bratt.
When accepting the invitation to receive this award, Hill stated: "“In the film world, one knows it’s a great honor to be invited for a special screening at the Venice Film Festival. With my new film Dead For A Dollar, this is the fourth time that I’ve been so fortunate, and now this award makes me yet more grateful. My thanks to Alberto Barbera, Giulia D'Agnolo Vallan, Cartier and the entire film community that has given me so much support and encouragement over the years. Thank you all, you’ve made an old man happy.”
The Director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera replied warmly: “Both inside and outside of tradition, Walter Hill constantly redraws the contours of the genres that form the horizons of his cinema - if nothing else, in order to transcend conventions in his nonstop search for a constructive relationship with the legacy of the American legend, inherited from classic cinema, and, on the other hand, for authentic modernity in ethics and form. Whether it be westerns, thrillers, horror, war films, or detective movies, Hill never refrains from making them an opportunity to create formal and narrative geometries that aim to recount modern times through genre stereotypes and to propose an aesthetic point of view that disregards and goes beyond the traditional demarcation line between good and evil. An auteur in the full sense of the term, Walter Hill nevertheless has no problem recognizing himself as a specialist in action movies, whose violence is subjugated to various degrees of stylization, and his search for new visual effects is conducted through constant experimentation on how to use the various possibilities offered by the film language."
“For the second edition of the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award, Cartier is proud to join the Venice Film Festival in paying tribute to Walter Hill’s outstanding work, talent and particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry”, has declared Arnaud Carrez, Chief Marketing Officer of Cartier. “Walter Hill has enriched the world of cinema with his productions since the 70s and has unequivocally become a mainstay in contemporary artistic creation”.
Hill's filmography is extensive, starting with his work as a screenwriter in the early 1970s with credits for The Getaway starring Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, and The Drowning Pool starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. In 1975, he made his directorial debut with Hard Times, a Depression-era street fighting drama starring Charles Bronson and James Coburn. From there, Hill chose a succession of projects that found both cult and mainstream audiences. Among his credits are smash hits like 48 Hrs. and Another 48 Hrs., both starring Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. While Hill is a veteran director of over twenty feature films, he has also made a successful foray into television, receiving both the Emmy and DGA Awards in 2005 for the pilot of the groundbreaking neo-western Deadwood. His overall work ranges from intimate character studies to full-blown blockbusters, and he has been critically praised for being equally adept at both.
The Venice International Film Festival will run from August 31st to September 10th, 2022 on the Lido di Venezia. For more info, check out their website.
Portrait of Walter Hill by © Nicolas Aproux, provided by La Biennale di Venezia, used with permission.
