Action superstar Jackie Chan is set to be honoured at the Locarno Film Festival this August.
The festival organiser shared the good news on 29 April, saying that the actor, known for his many iconic action films like “Project A” and “Police Story”, will be receiving the prestigious Pardo alla Carriera, or Career Leopard award.
His two aforementioned films will also be introduced at the festival on 9 August as part of the tribute to his career. On 10 August, the festival audience will also have an opportunity to see and hear Jackie during a public conversation event.
“Director, producer, actor, screenwriter, choreographer, singer, athlete, and daredevil stuntman, Jackie Chan is both a key figure in contemporary Asian cinema and one whose influence has rewritten the rules of Hollywood cinema,” said Locarno artistic director, Giona A. Nazzaro. “From his years at the China Drama Academy under Master Yu Jim-Yuen, working at a very young age as a stuntman in King Hu’s masterpiece A Touch of Zen, Chan has continually reinvented martial arts cinema and much beyond it.”
“A pure comic talent, he has absorbed the lessons of Buster Keaton and early cinema as his own, creating masterpieces that have captivated audiences around the world. With a sensibility worthy of the classic musical, he shaped an unprecedented poetics of the human body in motion,” he added.
Among previous Asian honorees were Johnnie To, Tsai Ming-liang, and Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan.
(Photo Source: Jackie Chan IG, IMDb)