| One of the world's best known directors and screenwriters, Màrta Mészáros, will receive the Golden Arena Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 63rd Pula Film Festival. The award will be presented by the Arts Council of the 63rd Pula Film Festival during the opening ceremony on Saturday the 9th of July and afterwards Màrta Mészáros will officially open the 63rd Pula Film Festival. This award is yet another way for 63rd Pula Film Festival to firmly stress the focus of its programme on women film forces and their indispensable contribution to film heritage on a global level. This festival year is marked by women power which, besides the aforementioned, is demonstrated by the number of women directors in all the programmes of the 63rd Festival, especially in the Croatian and international programmes where nearly half of the films are directed by women! As part of Pula PROfessional, programme for film professionals, a round table on the topic "Women in European and Croatian film" will be held, giving an additional contribution to the women in the film industry in the last few decades. Màrta Mészáros is a Hungarian world-famous author whose films characterised the most important international film festivals and whose work has greatly changed the world we live in. Her feature film debut The Girl (1968.) is the first Hungarian film directed by a woman. She is also the first woman to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival. With the award winning film Adoption (1975) she attracted international attention for the first time and with further work she established herself as a leader in the feminist movement. Her film Nine Months (1976.), received the FIPRESCI prize in Cannes, and Diary for my Children, banned for two years in Hungary, was awarded the Grand Prix in Cannes in 1984. The semi-autobiographical series of films, began in 1984 in black and white Diary for My Children, was continued by three films in colour - Diary for My Lovers, Diary for my Mother and Father and Little Vilma: The Last Diary. The Hungarian director and writer of international reputation will participate at 63rd Pula Film Festival as a special guest of this year's programme Retrospective through which we will bring a selection of her filmography through five titles created by Mészáros great directing in the last 40 years. Festival visitors will enjoy the following films: Adoption (1975), Diaries for my Children (1984), Diaries for my Lovers (1987), Diary for my Mother and Father (1990) and The Unburied Man. Without any modesty, we can say that Márta Mészáros still writes and directs films that change the world we live in for the better with a new film to be released this year. |
