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Venice Film Festival celebrates Chinese director John Woo
Sep 3, 2010, 9:33 GMT
Venice, Italy - This year's Venice Film Festival was set Friday to hand out its first award, a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, to Hong-Kong-born action-film master, John Woo.
Woo's highly stylised, carefully choreographed fight scenes - featured in martial arts films such as A Better Tomorrow and The Killer - have influenced many other directors.
One of these, Quentin Tarantino who heads the 2010 Venice Film Festival competition jury, has often expressed his admiration for the 64-year-old Woo.
Woo was scheduled to pick up the award at an evening ceremony at the festival's main Sala Grande hall venue located on the lagoon city's Lido.
The world premiere screening of Woo's most recent project, Jianyu (Reign of Assassins) which he co-directed with Taiwanese filmmaker Su Chao-pin, was set to follow the ceremony.
Also screening on Friday is one of the year's most anticipated new films, US director Sofia Coppola's, Somewhere.
Starring Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning, the film tells the story of a playboy whose feckless life is given new meaning with the sudden appearance of his 11-year-old daughter.
Two other in-competition films are set for their first screenings, Ovsyanki (Silent Souls) by Russian director Aleksei Fedorchenko, and La Passione by Italy's Carlo Mazzacurati.
The Venice film festival, the world's oldest cinema competition, ends on September 11 when the awards including the Golden Lion for best film will be announced.
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