The Locarno Film Festival will honor Jackie Chan with a lifetime career award honoring the martial arts master who helped define Hong Kong action cinema before becoming a Hollywood mainstay.
Chan is “beloved for action films that bridged the gap between East and West,” the Swiss event dedicated to indie cinema noted in a statement.
Chan, who made his name in martial-arts films in his native Hong Kong before establishing himself in Hollywood with 1995’s “Rumble in the Bronx” and then achieving global attention in the wildly popular “Rush Hour” films, will be making the trek to the Swiss fest where he will introduce his early films “Project A” (1983) and “Police Story” (1985) – both of which he directed and starring in – as part of the tribute.
Chan will hold an onstage conversation in Locarno on Aug. 10.
A far more complete filmmaker than is widely appreciated, Chan has co-directed, stunt-directed, financed or produced many of his 150-plus movies. After starting out as a child actor in the 1960s, Chan scored a major hit in 1978 with “Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow” and “Drunken Master.” Over the next decade his signature kung-fu comedy style blending bold stunts and easy-going charisma became a reliable box-office draw for Hong Kong’s now legendary Golden Harvest studio.
By the 1990s, Jackie Chan was Asia’s highest grossing action star. Buddy comedy “Rush Hour” in 1998 bolstered his career in Hollywood and gave him global superstar status.
Chan, who is 71, was celebrated with an honorary Oscar in 2017.
“Director, producer, actor, screenwriter, choreographer, singer, athlete, and daredevil stuntman, Jackie Chan is both a key figure in contemporary Asian cinema and one whose influence has rewritten the rules of Hollywood cinema,” said Locarno Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro in a statement.
“From his years at the China Drama Academy under Master Yu Jim-Yuen, working at a very young age as a stuntman in King Hu’s masterpiece ‘A Touch of Zen,’ Chan has continually reinvented martial arts cinema and much beyond it. A pure comic talent, he has absorbed the lessons of Buster Keaton and early cinema as his own, creating masterpieces that have captivated audiences around the world,” he added.
“With a sensibility worthy of the classic musical, he shaped an unprecedented poetics of the human body in motion. In cinema, there is a before Jackie Chan and an after Jackie Chan,” Nazzaro continued.
Previous winners of the Locarno Pardo alla Carriera Award include Francesco Rosi, Bruno Ganz, Claudia Cardinale, Johnnie To, Harry Belafonte, Jane Birkin, Costa-Gavras, Tsai Ming-liang, and, in 2024, Shah Rukh Khan.
The 78th edition of Locarno will run Aug. 6-16.
