Film as Art
Artist-director Julian Schnabel returns to Texas for Lone Star film honor
The Lone Star Film Festival has yet to announce the full lineup for its eighth annual edition in November, but already it has one big get: Julian Schnabel will be honored with the society’s Achievement in Film Directing Award.
Schnabel has only directed five films in his life. But three of them — Basquiat, Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — have been critically acclaimed, garnering multiple award nominations, including five Oscar nods.
Schnabel is arguably more well known as an artist, having been a fixture in the contemporary art world since the late 1970s. His first solo show took place at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (he is a University of Houston grad); since then his work has been shown in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, the Tate Gallery in London, and and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
An exhibit of his recent work was shown at Dallas Contemporary earlier this year. And Schnabel’s Theory of Relativity pulled in $175,000 for the MTV Staying Alive Foundation during the MTV RE:DEFINE auction in April.
Schnabel will participate in a discussion at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth on Thursday, November 6, talking about his films and his art with Texas Monthly film critic Christopher Kelly and Michael Auping, chief curator of the Modern. That discussion will be followed by a screening of Before Night Falls, starring Javier Bardem.
The next day, both Basquiat and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly will screen as part of the festival. Schnabel will then receive the Achievement in Film Directing Award later that night at the Lone Star Film Festival Ball.
Previous recipients of the Achievement in Film Directing Award have included Peter Bogdanovich, Billy Bob Thornton and Robert Duvall, among others.
Tickets for the Conversation with Julian Schnabel and screening of Before Night Falls, along with all LSFF individual tickets, go on sale the first week of October. They run $20 for general public; $15 for Modern members; and $10 for Modern Reel People, LSFS members and LSFF Festival pass holders.
LSFF All Access pass holders are admitted free of charge but must RSVP to rsvp@lonestarfilmsociety.com.