Ghent Film Festival Honoring Norman Jewison With Its Joseph Plateau Award

Producer-director Norman Jewison will be presented with the Joseph Plateau Award at the 38th Ghent Film Festival, which runs from Oct. 11-22 in Ghent, Belgium.

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The award is given to an individual “whose achievements have earned a distinct place in the history of international filmmaking.

Jewison, who received the Irving Thalberg Award at the 71st Academy Awards, has received seven Oscar nominations for his work on the films The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof, A Soldier’s Story and Moonstruck. He also was honored by the Directors Guild of America with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.

“Although he spent the vast majority of his career in the United States making movies with some of the biggest names in the business (Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Cher, Nicolas Cage, Eva Marie Saint, Denzel Washington,  Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, James Caan, Michael Caine, Bruce Willis) Norman Jewison, who was born in Toronto in 1926, has always stayed true to his Canadian roots. As a result, he was always considered somewhat of an outsider in Hollywood, a director who invariably took a critical view of the ‘system’, regardless of its form or ideological underpinnings,” Patrick Duynslaegher, the festival’s artistic director, said.

The festival, which will screen Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair, also will host a Q&A with the director on Oct. 21.