A major figure in contemporary American cinema, Gus Van Sant has built a body of work marked by a singular tension that resonates deeply with the spirit of film noir. To open its sixth edition, Reims Polar is immensely proud to welcome the filmmaker for a tribute and to present Dead Man’s Wire, his new feature inspired by the true story of a hostage-taking in the 1970s.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Gus Van Sant earned a BA at the Rhode Island School of Design. Early in his career he spent two years in New York creating commercials for Madison Avenue. Eventually he settled in Portland, Oregon, where in addition to directing and producing, he pursued painting, photography, and writing.
The director has been winning over critics and audiences alike since bursting onto the scene in 1985 with his widely acclaimed feature film Mala Noche, which won the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Independent/Experimental Film of 1987. His body of work includes many hallmarks of independent cinema, notably Drugstore Cowboy, with Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch, My Own Private Idaho (1991), and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993). Van Sant’s direction of Nicole Kidman in the 1995 black comedy To Die For, won a Golden Globe Award and debuting at the Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals.
He received a Best Director Academy Award nomination for Good Will Hunting, which received a total of nine Academy Awards nominations. Then in 1998 followed with the controversial remake of a classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Psycho, which was the first shot-for-shot recreation of a film. The new millennium brought the release of the literary drama Finding Forrester. Van Sant returned to his indie roots in 2002 with the beautiful and austere Gerry which he wrote with the film’s stars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. The experience of making Gerry inspired Van Sant to write and direct Elephant, a compelling reverie on a normal day of high school that is destroyed by a Columbine-like massacre. Shot in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland with a cast of non-actors, Elephant went on to win the Palme d’Or and Best Director award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Last Days followed in 2005 and won a sound design award for Leslie Shatz at Cannes. Next, Van Sant adapted the novel Paranoid Park by Blake Nelson to the screen. Once again, he cast non-actors and the film won the 60th Anniversary Award in 2007 at Cannes. In 2008 Van Sant nominated for his second Best Director Academy Award for Milk, which earned a total of 8 nominations, and won Oscars in the categories of Best Actor for Sean Penn’s performance as Harvey Milk, and Best Screenplay for Dustin Lance Black’s writing. This success was followed by Restless in 2011 and Promised Land, two years later. Most recently, he directed Matthew McConaughey, Naomi Watts and Ken Watanabe in The Sea of Trees, presented in competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, then Joaquin Phoenix in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, presented in competition at the 2018 Berlin Film Festival.
Throughout his 40-year career Mr. Van Sant has continued to make evocative short films, which have been winning awards at film festivals worldwide. These works include a deadpan black-and-white adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ short story “The Discipline of D.E.. In 1996 Van Sant directed Allen Ginsberg reading his own poem, “Ballad of the Skeletons,” to the music of Paul McCartney and Philip Glass. Other acclaimed shorts include 1987’s Five Ways to Kill Yourself; Thanksgiving Prayer, a 1991 re-teaming with Burroughs; Le Marais (2006), a segment of the compilation project Paris, Je T’aime, and Mansion on the Hill (2008), which is part of the UN funded project 8, created to raise awareness about essential issues the world is facing today.
