Jackie Chan

Source: Mandarin Motion Pictures

Jackie Chan

Hong Kong star Jackie Chan is to be honoured with the Pardo Alla Carriera award at the 78th Locarno Film Festival (August 6-16).

The award will recognise Chan’s career to date, which spans more than 150 films over six decades as an actor, martial arts stuntman and filmmaker. He will receive the honour on August 9 on Locarno’s Piazza Grande.

Chan will also introduce 1983 action-comedy Project A and 1985 classic Police Story, which he both directed and starred in, at the festival. He will also take part in an on-stage conversation that is open to the public on August 10.

After beginning as a child actor in the 1960s, Chan found major success in 1978 with Snake In The Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master, and over the next decade, his blend of kung-fu comedy with audacious stunts was a reliable box-office draw for legendary Hong Kong studio Golden Harvest.

By the 1990s, Chan was Asia’s highest grossing action star and he made his break into Hollywood with 1996 buddy comedy Rush Hour. His work as a director ranges from Police Story and Armour Of God to 2012’s Chinese Zodiac. He will next be seen in Karate Kid: Legends, Sony’s next chapter in the martial arts franchise, that is set for release at the end of May.

Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro said: “Jackie Chan is both a key figure in contemporary Asian cinema and one whose influence has rewritten the rules of Hollywood cinema. Chan has continually reinvented martial arts cinema and… has absorbed the lessons of Buster Keaton and early cinema as his own, creating masterpieces that have captivated audiences around the world.”

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