XXV edition
8/13 December 2015
EDITORIALS
NEWS
PROGRAM
FILMS
BOOKS
Scerbanenco
Conversations
Chandler Awards
EVENTS
CHANDLER AWARDS
GALLERY
NEWS
PROGRAM
FILMS
BOOKS
Scerbanenco
Conversations
Chandler Awards
EVENTS
CHANDLER AWARDS
GALLERY
Honky Tonk Samurai
After Jeffery Deaver (winner of the Chandler in 2014), the "Noir Nobel" scepter passes to Joe R. Lansdale, accompanied by the following statement:
"A fashioner of devilish plots, a narrator with no boundaries or self-imposed limits, the ironic and visionary creator of memorable characters and indelible scenes and settings, the Texan Joe R. Lansdale enlists the original hallmarks of the noir genre for his thoroughly modern conception, committed to showing the raw stuff of reality through a fantastical kaleidoscope, and serving up his overwhelming passion for pop culture in a genial and unmistakable prose."
Born in Gladewater on October 28, 1951, and raised in nearby Nacogdoches, the town in eastern Texas that is the setting for some of his popular novels and where he still lives today, Joe Richard Lansdale has borrowed a famous saying of John Steinbeck’s, "Texas is a state of mind" and applied it to that instantly identifiable landscape that is the backdrop to the antics of his oddball characters, from the unlikely duo of accidental detectives Hap & Leonard, to the three hilarious misfits from the Drive-In trilogy and the reporter Phillip Barlowe and detective Hanson on the trail of the "Houston Hacker" in Lansdale’s first novel, Act of Love, which came out exactly 35 years ago, in 1981.
Joe R. Lansdale roams willingly through the fantastical in all its forms, from his pet genre science ficion to fantasy (he also ably scripted the Batman cartoons), in works that run the gamut from humor to the psychological novel. Endowed with a voracious appetite for films, cartoons and tales straight out of authentic pop culture, Lansdale has always enjoyed a special relationship with the cinematic genre, working with Ridley Scott, writing for television (his Hap & Leonard series will be back on the air in the U.S. next spring). He’s been happy to see his oeuvre ‘plundered’ by directors of the likes of Don Coscarelli and Jim Mickle; he’s mentored young writers.
‘Lansdale’ and ‘Italy’ are two words that have always gone together, and the writer’s first time in Italy, in the country he’s adopted - or been adopted by - was right in Courmayeur in 2003.
Meanwhile, his two oddball heroes are back, after too long a wait, in Honky Tonk Samurai, which Einaudi is bringing out on the eve of the Raymond Chandler Award itself. This tale of old harpies, mistreated canines, whores, bikers and serial killers is the ninth adventure in a series almost as popular as the Drive-In Trilogy, if not more, summing up the best to come out in the author’s noir vein.
By now Joe R. Lansdale has over 40 novels and more than 200 short stories to his credit, yet his extraordinary vitality and contagious optimism still guarantee his fans will be entertained and enthralled for years to come.
On the occasion of the Raymond Chandler Award, Noir in Festival offers up a screening of the latest film to be based on a Joe R. Lansdale novel: Cold in July, directed by Jim Mickle and starring Michael C. Hall, Don Johnson and Sam Shephard. The movie premiered at Cannes in 2014 (Un Certain Regard).
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PROGRAM
11/12/2015 h 16:45: Maserati Winter Lounge - Jardin de l'Ange RAYMOND CHANDLER AWARD 2015 presented by Giancarlo De Cataldo & Luca Crovi
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