Milos Forman to Receive Film Society Directing Award

Milos Forman will receive the Film Society Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing at the 47th Festival. The Award will be presented to Forman by Danny DeVito on Thursday, April 22 at Film Society Awards Night at the Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco. The Film Society will be the beneficiary of the gala black-tie fundraiser honoring Forman and Chris Cooper.

A public presentation, including a compilation of clips from Forman’s illustrious career, an onstage interview and a screening of Hair (USA, 1979) is scheduled for Friday, April 23. Additionally, his films Taking Off (USA, 1971) and The Firemen’s Ball (Czechoslovakia, 1967, SFIFF 1968), will be shown on Sunday, April 18, at the Castro Theatre. The Film Society Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing is sponsored by Bulgari.

Roxanne Messina Captor, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society, announced Forman’s upcoming appearance at Film Society Awards Night with enthusiasm, remarking that, “The films of Milos Forman evince an eclectic and questing nature and portray the vagaries of human beings with great humor and pathos.”

Born in Czechoslovakia, this genre-busting filmmaker first received worldwide acclaim with the touching romance, Loves of a Blonde (Czechoslovakia, 1966), and the comedic satire, The Firemen’s Ball. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he resettled in the United States, making his English-language debut with Taking Off, a charming look at America’s burgeoning counterculture. He then directed a segment of the award-winning documentary about the Olympics, Visions of Eight (1973). Soon thereafter, Forman unforgettably depicted life in a mental institution with One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), produced by Bay Area–based Saul Zaentz, and swept that year’s Academy Awards.

Since then, he has chosen his projects carefully, from stage and literary adaptations (Hair, Ragtime (1981), Amadeus (1984) and Valmont (1989)) to portraits of larger-than-life real people (The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Man on the Moon (1999)). Over the course of his 40-year career, Forman has been rewarded for his meticulous, risk-taking work with two Oscars, three Golden Globes and two Director’s Guild Awards, and his films have received honors from the Berlin Film Festival and Cannes. The San Francisco International Film Festival was among the first in this country to recognize Forman’s work. The Firemen’s Ball was shown here in 1968, and in 1969 Forman received a tribute as part of the Craft of Cinema series.

Each year, the San Francisco International Film Festival honors a master of world cinema with an award for lifetime achievement in film directing. Previous recipients of the Film Society’s directing award include Robert Altman, USA; Warren Beatty, USA; Clint Eastwood, USA; Abbas Kiarostami, Iran; Arturo Ripstein, Mexico; Im Kwon-Taek, Korea; Francesco Rosi, Italy; Arthur Penn, USA; Stanley Donen, USA; Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal; Ousmane Sembène, Senegal; Satayajit Ray, India; Marcel Carné, France; Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia; Joseph L. Mankiewicz, USA; Robert Bresson, France; Michael Powell, England and Akira Kurosawa, Japan.