Gucci Group Award 2009

GUCCI GROUP ANNOUNCES NOMINEES

 

Yann Arthus-Bertrand, photographer, for the direction of “Home”
Mark Boal, journalist, for writing “The Hurt Locker”
Shirin Neshat, photographer and video artist, for the direction of “Women Without Men”
Pipilotti Rist, video artist, for the direction of “Pepperminta”

 

The fourth edition of the Gucci Group Award will be held at the 66th Venice International Film Festival on September 7th, 2009.

 

Amsterdam, August 26, 2009 - Gucci Group today announced that the photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the journalist Mark Boal, the photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat, the video artist Pipilotti Rist are nominees for the fourth annual Gucci Group Award. The award ceremony will be held during the 66th Venice International Film Festival Palazzo Grassi on September 7, 2009.

 

Each year, the Gucci Group Award is bestowed to an internationally-acclaimed artist who has made a remarkable contribution to a film in any capacity within the past 18 months, as a director, actor, screenwriter, set designer, or costume designer. The Selection Committee always includes personalities from various fields of arts and culture. Each member nominates one artist, and together the Committee determines the winner of the Award.

 

Members of the 2009 Gucci Group Award Selection Committee are: director, actress, screenwriter Zoe Cassavetes, actress Patricia Clarkson, internationally acclaimed photographer Mario Testino, international editor and opinion leader Ingrid Sischy and Marco Müller, director of the Venice International Film Festival.

 

Past Gucci Group Awards recipients include British artist Steve McQueen for his direction of “Hunger” (2008), artist Julian Schnabel for his third film as a Director “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (2007) and Australian musician Nick Cave for his screenplay “The Proposition” (2006).

 

“Consistently with our DNA, the Gucci Group Award celebrates genius and eclecticism” says Robert Polet, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Gucci Group “The winners from the previous editions and this year’s nominees are concrete examples of this”.

 

The winner of the fourth annual Gucci Group Award will be announced on September 7, 2009 during the ceremony at Palazzo Grassi in Venice at 7:00 p.m.

 

For media inquiries:
Paola Milani Claudia Mora
Gucci Group N.V. Gucci Group N.V.
+39 02 8800 5562 +39 02 8800 5550
paola.milani@guccigroup.com claudia.mora@guccigroup.com

 

About Gucci Group
Gucci Group N.V. is one of the world’s leading multi-brand luxury goods companies. Through the brands Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Boucheron, Sergio Rossi, Stella McCartney, the Group designs, produces and distributes high-quality personal luxury goods, including ready-to-wear, handbags, luggage, small leather goods, shoes, timepieces, jewellery, ties and scarves. Also, under license from global industry leaders, eyewear and fragrances, cosmetics and skincare products. The Group directly operates stores in major markets throughout the world and wholesales products through franchise stores, duty-free boutiques and leading department and specialty stores. Gucci Group is owned by PPR whose shares are traded on the Euronext Paris (# 121485, PRTP.PA,PPFP

 

NOMINEES BACKGROUND

 

Yann Arthus-Bertrand a Paris-born photographer, is perhaps the best known aerial photographer on the planet. In 1991, Arthus-Bertrand created Altitude, the first photo agency specialized in aerial photography. In the 90s, under the patronage of UNESCO, he embarked upon his most ambitious project: creating an image bank of the earth seen from above. Arthus-Bertrand’s aim was to create a record of the world’s environment for present and future generations. He has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide of his seminal photo essay Earth From Above, a decade-spanning attempt to photograph all the vistas of the planet from the sky, whether by helicopter, hot air balloon, or anything else that flies. This work led to the movie Home, featuring striking aerial images which have been filmed in 54 countries around the world. Released in more than 87 countries worldwide on the World Environment Day (June 5th 2009) in cinemas, on television, on DVD and on Internet, Home was aimed at raising environmental awareness all over the planet. His photography appears in magazines like National Geographic, Life, GEO, and Sierra Magazine. He is the chairman of GoodPlanet.org, a nonprofit association for the promotion of sustainable development.

 

Mark Boal was born and raised in New York City and graduated with honors in philosophy from Oberlin College before beginning a career as an investigative reporter and writer of long form non-fiction. An acclaimed series for the Village Voice on the rise of surveillance in America led to a position at the alternative weekly writing a weekly column, “The Monitor,” when he was 25. Boal subsequently covered politics, technology, crime, youth culture and drug culture in stories for national publications including Rolling Stone, Brill’s Content, Mother Jones, The New York Observer and Playboy. He is currently a writer-at-large for Playboy. In 2003, he wrote “Death and Dishonor,” the true story of a military veteran who goes searching for his missing son, which later became the basis for Paul Haggis’ follow up to “Crash,” “In the Valley of Elah.” In 2004, Boal spent two weeks in Baghdad, embedded with the members of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (E.O.D.) unit. Boal’s reporting led to the screenplay for “The Hurt Locker.”

 

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian photographer and installation/film artist. Neshat came to the United States as a student in 1974. She remained away from Iran throughout the revolution until her first visit back in 1990. This trip, and the visits that followed, catalyzed her exploration of Westernization, Islam, gender roles, martyrdom, and censorship against the backdrop of her birth country. Her stark yet stunning black-and-white photography series "Women of Allah" wherein her models (often herself) are clothed in the iconographic chador, Farsi calligraphy, and weapons won her international acclaim. Neshat followed this success with a series of installation video and film projects that are often mounted on two screens in enclosed spaces, gripping the audience in visual and aural experience. Less specific to the revolution, these metaphorical, unconventional and performative narratives employ Islamic/Eastern references and other archetypes to explore power dynamics, isolation, societal forces, autobiography, and exile. Throughout her work, Neshat not only redefines the critical boundaries of her art but expands the viewer's capacity to contemplate ideas of universal significance.

 

Pipilotti Rist is a Swiss-born artist who creates colorful multi-screen video works which, often with the pace and seduction of a pop promo, signal the birth of a new interdisciplinary art form. With such lighthearted artworks as “Ever Is Over All” presented at the 1997 Venice Biennale (which won Rist the Biennale's Premio 2000), showing a princess-like young girl happily smashing car windows, Rist invents new possibilities for poetry, feminine identity and the traditional genre of portraiture. The highly accomplished technological skill reflected in her work since the late 1980s, incorporating in unprecedented ways the art forms of film, music, sculpture and performance, have established Rist among the world's best-known contemporary video artists.