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Jonathan Demme to chair jury at San Sebastian film festival
2008-08-07
MADRID (AFP) - Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme will chair the jury at next month's San Sebastian Film Festival as well as presenting an unfinished work on Canadian rock star Neil Young, organisers said Thursday. "The Neil Young Trunk Show: Scenes from a Concert" is a "high energy performance" documentary and a "work-in-progress" which will be shown for the first time at the festival, the organisers said. The US director's earlier documentary "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" was shown as part of the official selection for the 2006 festival. Demme, who collected an Academy Award in 1991 for "The Silence of the Lambs", will also show his latest feature "Rachel Getting Married," starring Anne Hathaway and Debra Winger, outside the official competition. The 56th edition of the San Sebastian festival, the oldest and most prestigious event of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world, takes place from September 18 to 27. The organisers announced earlier this year the films that will compete for the top Golden Shell award. They include British director Michael Winterbottom's "Genova", a ghost story starring Colin Firth; "Frozen River" by American Courtney Hunt, which won the Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance film festival; and "Fear Me Not" by Denmark's Kristian Levring, one of the creators of the Dogme 95 movement. Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf, a two-time winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, will compete with her fourth feature film "Two-Legged Horse." Other directors with films in competition include Japan's Hirokazu Kore-edam, Turkey's Yesim Ustaoglu, Argentina's Daniel Burman, France's Christophe Honore, Kim Ki-duk of South Korea and Palestinian Rashid Masharawi. The festival will also feature retrospectives of the works of British filmmaker Terence Davies, director of "Distant Voices, Still Lives", of the comedies of 93-year-old Italian filmmaker Mario Monicelli and of Japanese post-war film noir. "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas," directed by Mark Herman and based on the best-selling novel by John Boyne, will have its international premiere at this year's festival, although not as part of the official competition. Last year's Golden Shell for best film went to Hong Kong-born Wayne Wang's "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers".
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