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_THE S.U.R.G.E.! FILM FESTIVAL
Lifetime Achievement Awards Each year the SURGE film festival grows larger. To read the biographies of our 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Please click on the Below Links. This is The Full Lifetime Achievement Award Biography for Richard Linklater. If you would prefer top see the Short Lifetime Achievement Award Biography for Richard Linklater please click here. SURGE Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award
To say that Richard Linklater embodies the independence, social justice, joy and happiness aspects of the SURGE Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award would be an understatement. Richard is the founder of the Austin Film Society, screenwriter and director of Cult Classics of Independent Filmmaking such as SLACKERS and DAZED AND CONFUSED and directed social justice films such as FAST FOOD NATION. Excerpt from the Full Lifetime Achievement Award (L.A.A.) Biography ( see full biography at www.WeSurge.org and click 'Film Fest L.A.A. profiles'). Self-taught writer/director Richard Linklater was among the first and most successful talents to emerge during the American independent film renaissance of the 1990s. Typically setting each of his movies during one 24-hour period, Linklater's work explored what he dubbed "the youth rebellion continuum," focusing in fine detail on generational rites and mores with rare compassion and understanding while definitively capturing the twenty-something culture of his era through a series of nuanced, illuminating ensemble pieces which introduced any number of talented young actors into the Hollywood firmament. Born in Houston, TX, Linklater founded a film society, the Austin Film Society and began work on his debut short film, 1987's “It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books.” Three years later he released the seminal film and cult classic, 'SLACKER'. Landing with Universal, Linklater next filmed 1993's DAZED AND CONFUSED, set during the last day of high school in 1976. Linklater later directed 1997's SUBURBIA. Linklater's first foray into major-studio filmmaking, THE NEWTON BOYS, followed a year later. The true-life, Bonnie and Clyde-esque tale of a group of bank-robbing brothers, it shared little in common with the director's other films -- aside from the casting of Linklater pals ETHAN HAWKE and MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY as angsty young Texans. Linklater found himself willing to give Hollywood another try in 2003 when presented with Mike White's script for SCHOOL OF ROCK, a fish-out-of-water comedy starring Jack Black as an unreliable, would-be substitute teacher who commandeers a class of sixth-graders. He followed up that success with BEFORE SUNSET, a sequel to Before Sunrise that reunited ETHAN HAWKE and JULIE DELPY. The film, full of motifs that have carried through all of Linklater's best work, earned him a flurry of critical praise and an Oscar nomination for screenwriting. In 2006 Linklater had two films at the CANNES FILM FESTIVAL. His fictional adaptation of Eric Schlosser's non-fiction book FAST FOOD NATION competed in the main competition. A. O. Scott of The New York Times described the film FAST FOOD NATION, as one which does “not neglect the mute, helpless suffering of the cows, but it also acknowledges the status anxiety of the managerial class, the aspirations of the working poor (legal and otherwise) and the frustrations of the dreaming young. It's a mirror and a portrait, and a movie as necessary and nourishing as your next meal." Wesley Morris, of the Boston Globe Staff describes Fast Food Nations in the following manner: Richard Linklater's "Fast Food Nation" is major. It...could shame a Big Mac lover into having a salad. Yet while it feels like a call to arms, the movie's glamourless style and the conditions it describes are so stark you go home spent. That's an outcome more American directors should risk. Linklater has fashioned Eric Schlosser's exhaustive nonfiction bestseller about the bloody tentacles of the fast-food industry into a morality play about the vicious circle of consumption that puts the worker in the maw of the corporation...“both a work of investigative journalism and an immense human-interest story, veering into muckraking, horror, teen comedy, and what passes for "Twilight Zone" science fiction.” The movie Slacker is said to marked the starting point for the independent film movement of the 1990s. Many of the independent filmmakers of that period credit the film with inspiring or opening doors for them, perhaps most famously Kevin Smith, who has said on numerous occasions that the film was the inspiration for Clerks. Slacker is to have popularized the use of the word "slacker" to describe "a person regarded as one of a large group or generation of young people (especially in the early to mid 1990s) characterized by apathy, aimlessness, and lack of ambition". Linklater, however, has said that he wanted the word to have positive connotations. For example, in a self-interview in the Austin Chronicle, Linklater stated: “Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.” For all of Richard's visionary perspectives which encourage people of all generations not to waste... “their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for,” ...for all of Richard' s cross-genre creativity, risk taking innovation, for all of Richard's commitment to taking on social justice issues and speaking up for the working class, the confused anxiety of the managerial class, the dreams of the documented and undocumented financially disadvantaged social class and the young at heart, and for inspiring film societies such as the Austin Film Society that encourage people to raise their voice, the Sixth Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement festival is honored to award Richard Linklater with a Lifetime Achievement award in Austin, Texas on February 20th, 2011. This award will be awarded at a Before-the-Film Fest Gala Evening Celebration on the 20th of February 2011 admitting only those with a SURGE Film Festival HERO Pass. This is a Historic Celebration and amazing networking opportunity with live music on the evening preceding the festival. Free shuttle service to this private event will be provided along with the SURGE Film Festival HERO Pass! This event will also be streamed live via the Internet and recorded so that people of all social classes and backgrounds worldwide may have access to this historic moment honoring someone who has given so much to so many people around the world. References: Many quotes from this article came from 'All Movie Guide', Wikipedia, New York Times and many other articles named throughout this article. Brought to you by the Annual International Social Uprising Resistance and Grassroots Encouragement (SURGE) Film Festival and the Annual International A World Beyond Capitalism Conference Organizers You Provide the Dream. We Provide the Tools, the Multicultural Collaboration and the Supportive Community to Help Make Those Dreams Come True. The A World Beyond Capitalism Conference is Separate from the S.U.R.G.E! Film Festival.
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