“The Cannes Film Festival is pleased to pay tribute to one of the greatest figures of contemporary cinema, a man with an extraordinary career, combining great entertainment and innovation, mythology and modernity, and cinephilia and technology,” the festival said.
Lucas said Cannes had always had a special place in his heart as a filmmaker for giving him one of his first festival holidays.
“The Cannes Film Festival has always had a special place in my heart. “I was surprised and elated when my first film, THX-1138, was selected to be screened in a new program for first-time directors called Directors’ Fortnight.”
“Since then, I have returned to the festival on many occasions in various capacities as a writer, director and producer. “I am truly honored by this special recognition that means a lot to me,” he added.
The Cannes Festival statement on the career of George Lucas
Charting Lucas’s career, the festival highlighted how his debut in the film industry was marked by his close collaboration with Francis Ford Coppolawho helped him produce THX 1138 (1971), which in turn was an adaptation of one of his experimental short films made at the University of Southern California.
“From his first feature film, George Lucas staged the themes that are dear to him: science fiction to denounce a surveillance society, the use of love to fight against destiny and conformity, and the inversion of moral values to challenge the role of good and evil,” reads the festival’s statement.
The festival also highlighted how Lucas had “discovered” Harrison Ford in American Graffiti before meeting him at Star Wars.
“A visionary intergalactic odyssey that reinvented the codes of film genres as part of the New Hollywood movement, Star Wars is nothing less than mythology, a study that has fascinated George Lucas since his university days, in the construction of characters and plots and in the breadth of its cultural reach,” Cannes said of this latest franchise.
“Like Tolkien in literature, he imagined a universe, with its geography, populations, languages, moral values and even its vehicles.. This exceptional ambition, which initially scared the producers at 20th Century Fox and led to grueling post-production, was however the recipe for unprecedented success: the film captivated the American public and became a global sociocultural phenomenon, which continues to this day. the present day. “
The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will be held from May 14 to 25.
The bulk of its Official Selection will be announced at a press conference in Paris on April 11.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
