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By Ben Eagle on

John Hurt awarded Lifetime Achievement at BIFF 2010

Festival Producer Ben Eagle had the honour of presenting John Hurt with his Lifetime Achievement award at BIFF on Saturday night.

John Hurt joined us on Saturday for a wonderful event led by Tony Earnshaw, the festival’s Artistic Director. After an introductory speech from Tony, followed by a clip from David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, John Hurt was greeted by rapturous applause from the sell-out crowd.

While covering a vast amount of Hurt’s repertoire, the 90-minute interview was sufficiently in-depth but left the audience hungry for more as Hurt’s filmography (supplied to the audience as they entered) is in excess of 150 films, all of which couldn’t be mentioned for obvious reasons!

Strictly speaking, this wasn’t the first time John had graced Pictureville’s stage. He appeared in Paper Zoo’s theatre production of George Orwell’s 1984 in June 2009—playing the on-screen Big Brother—which I was heavily involved with. We had spent an afternoon filming with John in London last year and have since stayed in contact. Due to our working together, Tony felt it appropriate that I present John with the BIFF 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award, which I was delighted to do. John received a standing ovation on receiving the award and gave a very gracious but unassuming acceptance speech.

He was greeted by a large amount of fans outside who he happily spent time meeting and signing autographs for. It was a thoroughly entertaining, enlightening and exciting event which received some wonderful feedback and really was a highlight of the festival.

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