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If there is an actress, who fits ideally into the series of the previous, great Viennale Tributes – from Lauren Bacall to Jane Fonda – and at the same time breaks it in the most beautiful and radical way, then it is the tribute guest of this year’s festival, Tilda Swinton. Born in Scotland in 1960, Swinton represents the contradictions and productive waywardness of contemporary cinema like hardly any other actress. Her career – if it can be called such, for Swinton has rejected it repeatedly with surprises and the unpredictable – started in the mid-1980s with her collaboration with the radical outsider and great cinematic stylist Derek Jarman and reached its peak, for the time being, with her being awarded an Oscar a good twenty years later.
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In between unfolds an unprecedented range of headstrong cinematic figures and inventions, radical border-crossers and sleep-walkers caught between the times, cultures and genders: such as in Peter Wollen’s Friendship’s Death (1987), Derek Jarman’s Edward II (1991) and, her perhaps most important performance, in Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992). At the same time she succeeded in rendering equally exact and absolutely realistic female characterizations such as the unconditionally avenging mother in The Deep End (2001) or the hopelessly driven Julia in Erick Zonca’s eponymous road movie.
Somewhere beneath all these rich, radical and stylistic films, between underground and industry, Hollywood and minority cinema, lies the secret nature of this outstanding actress and personality, who characterizes herself as: “Too serious to be a dilettante. Too much of a dabbler to be a professional.”
Films
Caravaggio, Derek Jarman, GB 1986
Friendship's Death, Peter Wollen, GB 1987
The Garden, Derek Jarman, GB/D 1990
Edward II, Derek Jarman, GB 1991
Man to Man, John Maybury, GB 1991
Orlando, Sally Potter, GB/Russland/F/I/NL 1992
Female Perversions, Susan Streitfeld, USA/D 1996
The Deep End, Scott McGehee, David Siegel, USA 2001
Teknolust, Lynn Hershman-Leeson, USA/D/GB 2001
Constantine, Francis Lawrence, USA/D 2005
Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy, USA 2007
Julia, Erick Zonca, USA/F/Mexiko/B 2007
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