John Woo awarded Golden Lion at Venice

by Rohini Chandrasekhar

Veteran Hollywood director John Woo was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival when he was handed the Golden Lion on September 3rd. Chinese by birth, Woo has been in filmdom for over 30 years now, starting off with a career in Hong Kong before moving to make it begin Hollywood. He has directed over 26 movies in his career including biggies like Mission Impossible 2, which earned gross revenues of $1 billion worldwide.

Woo has been famous for his stylized action thrillers that have a mass appeal for the graphics and action involved. He debuted in Hollywood with Jean-Claude Van Damme starrer ‘Hard Target’ in 1993, but his first major runaway success was the 1995 film, ‘Broken Arrow” with John Travolta and Christian Slater in the lead. Woo has directed other Hollywood blockbusters Face/Off, Hard Boiled, Hostage and Paycheck among others.

Woo has recently shifted back to making movies in China, claiming that he feels that it was time he used his knowledge earned from Hollywood for the betterment of Chinese cinema worldwide. He is currently busy with ‘Red Cliff” based on a war that had taken place in 3rd century China.

Woo was in Venice to showcase his epic martial arts thriller starring Michelle Yeoh in the out-of-competition category, when he was pleasantly surprised with the wonderful news of his winning the Golden Lion. Humble as ever, Woo played down the award and pointed out that he hardly contributed much to the film society.

Venice Film Festival director Marco Mueller, however, felt that Woo was rightly honored with the achievement award, since his movies were “a perfect union of the China tradition and avant-garde filmmaking.” Woo was handed over the award at the Palazzo del Cinema in front of packed audiences by American director Quentin Tarantino, the president of the jury for this year Venice Film Festival.


John Woo awarded Golden Lion at Venice
--

Another Asian director honored at an international film festival! John Woo is one of the best directors China has ever produced, along side Ang Lee.