Lifetime Achievement Award for director Terence Davies

The Lifetime Achievement Award of Film by the Sea 2011 will be given to director Terence Davies because of his uncompromising way of making films outside the studio systems. This has lead to a relatively sporadic output with five feature films (amongst which ‘Distant Voices, Still Lives’ (1988) and the documentary Of Time and the City (2008).
















His short (autobiographical) films are gathered under the title ‘The Terrence Davies Trilogy’ (1983). The films mentioned above can be viewed in a retrospective during Film by the Sea. Recently Davies released his fifth feature film: ‘The Deep Blue Sea’.

Davies will collect his Award on 16 September during the Award Ceremony of Film by the Sea.

Davies has a style of his own. His films are notable for their symmetrical compositions, symphonic structure and measured pace. He has made highly personal autobiographical films such as ‘Distant Voices, Still Lives’ (1988) and ‘The Long Day Closes’ (1992) and literary adaptations: ‘The Neon Bible’ (1995) and ‘The House of Mirth’ (2000), adaptations of novels by John Kennedy Toole and Edith Wharton respectively.

Emotional (and sometimes physical) endurance, the influence of memory on everyday life and the potentially crippling effects of dogmatic religiosity on the emotional life of individuals and societies are recurring themes in his work. Davies is the sole screenwriter of his films. Due to his refusal to compromise, Davies’ output has been comparatively sporadic. His documentary ‘Of Time and the City’ premiered out of competition at the Cannes Film festival in 2008. In 2011, his fifth feature film ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ based on the play with Terence Rattigan came out.

The Lifetime Achievement Award of Film by the Sea was previously given to Ettore Scola (2003), Saul Zaentz and Milos Forman (2004), Istvan Szábo (2005), Jonathan Demme (2006), Volker Schlöndorff (2007), the Dardenne brothers (2008), George Sluizer (2009) and Jean-Claude Carrière (2010).

The Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded to Davies during the Award Ceremony of Film by the Sea on Friday 16 September from 19.30 to 20.30 hrs in CineCity Vlissingen. During this ceremony the other awards of the festival (Dioraphte Film and Literature Award and CPNB Film and Literature Audience Award) will be announced as well.