John Carpenter To Present Roger Corman With Living Legend Award

Roger Corman, Honorary Academy Award-winner and pioneering filmmaker, will be the recipient of the Legend Award at the New Media Film Festival, which will be presented to Corman by Oscar-winning filmmaker John Carpenter. "We are proud and honored to award Roger Corman the New Media Film Festival's Legend Award for a long career of iconoclastic and memorable films, for also inspiring audiences and helping to launch generations of successful filmmakers with his groundbreaking approach," said Susan Johnston, producer and founder of the Festival. The award ceremony will take place during the closing night of the Fifth Annual New Media Film Festival on Wednesday, June 11 at 9:00 PM at the Landmark Theatre in Los Angeles. Roger Corman, once called upon to produce a notorious Fantastic Four movie so that Fox could retain the rights, remains a master of low budget film as the so-called King of the B-movies, but he also set the standard for the quality of how small budget films could be made. His films adapting the work of Edgar Allen Poe have earned him critical praise and he was widely admired by the French New Wave film-making movement. Corman was the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française, the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art. He's also generous and has a sharp eye for new talent by mentoring and influencing many young film directors from Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich and Francis Ford Coppola to Ron Howard and Jonathan Demme. He helped launch the careers of actors Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, among others. "In addition to redefining production techniques, Roger Corman changed the pattern of film distribution," said Johnston. "His company, New World Films, distributed the precursors of the new American film movement and introduced American audiences to European classics such as Fellini's Amarcord and Bergman's Cries and Whispers." Johnston acknowledged, "Corman continues to remain relevant and inspirational to the thriving independent film movement to this day and there is no single individual more deserving of the New Media Film Festival's Legend Award than Roger Corman." Sculptor Brent Armstrong created a piece of art to display at this year's festival as a tribute to Corman's late special effects guru Paul Blaisdell, In the early years of Corman's storied career in films, Blaisdell designed monsters and effects for his films.