The Board Of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has voted a special honorary Oscar (statuette) to director Alejandro G. Inarritu’s extraordinary virtual reality installation, Carne y Arena. It will be presented at the upcoming Governors Awards on November 11 which will be held at the Ray Dolby Ballroon at Hollywood & Highland Center. This joins previously announced Governors Award honorees this year including actor Donald Sutherland, director Agnes Varda, cinematographer Owen Roizman , and filmmaker Charles Burnett.
In making the announcement of the Oscar to this unique achievement (full name Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible) the Academy said it was in recognition of a visionary and powerful experience in storytelling . It was first unveiled at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in May in a nearby airport hangar where I was among the lucky ones to experience it , and experience is the word.
“The Governors of the Academy are proud to present a special Oscar to ‘CARNE y ARENA,’ in which Alejandro Iñárritu and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki Chachi Ramirez have opened for us new doors of cinematic perception,” said Academy President John Bailey. “‘CARNE y ARENA,’ Iñárritu’s multimedia art and cinema experience, is a deeply emotional and physically immersive venture into the world of migrants crossing the desert of the American southwest in early dawn light. More than even a creative breakthrough in the still emerging form of virtual reality, it viscerally connects us to the hot-button political and social realities of the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Los Angeles residents currently have the opportunity to see “CARNE y ARENA,” as it is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), as well as at Fondazione Prada in Milan, and Tlatelolco Cultural Center in Mexico City, is a collaboration between Iñárritu, Lubezki, producer Mary Parent, Legendary Entertainment, Fondazione Prada, ILMxLAB, and Emerson Collective. Katie Calhoon executive produced.
The Oscar will be Inarritu’s fifth Academy Award. He won three for Birdman including Best Picture , Director , and Screenplay as well as becoming only the second director in 65 years to win back to back awards for Best Director when he won that award again for 2015’s The Revenant. In my Cannes coverage I was so impressed and moved by Carne y Arena I suggested it might be nice , if logistically impossible, to find a way to give it an Oscar. It looks like the Board found a way.
Source: Deadline Hollywood