Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh will headline a major fundraiser in February for Film Streams’ Ruth Sokolof Theater, Omaha’s nonprofit arthouse movie theater.
Soderbergh will take center stage at the Holland Center at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 20 to talk with “Studio 360” radio host Kurt Andersen about the filmmaker’s remarkable career. Omaha director-screenwriter Alexander Payne will introduce them.
The event, dubbed Feature III, will be similar in format to the 2008 and 2009 events at which Payne interviewed actresses Laura Dern and Debra Winger. Payne and Andersen serve on Film Streams boards.
Soderbergh burst onto the moviemaking scene in 1989 when he won the top award at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d’Or, for “sex, lies and videotape,” a movie about relationships and deceit. He was 26, the youngest filmmaker to receive the award. The same movie earned him an original-screenplay Oscar nomination.
“He’s the perfect Film Streams invitee,” Payne told The World-Herald. “No other contemporary American director has had such a diverse, risk-taking and prolific run.”
Soderbergh is the only director to win double nominations in the same year at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and the Directors Guild Awards. The year was 2000 and the nominations were for “Erin Brockovich,” for which Julia Roberts won the best-actress Oscar playing a paralegal, and “Traffic,” for which Benicio Del Toro won the supporting-actor Oscar as an undercover drug agent.
Soderbergh won best-director and best-picture Oscars for “Traffic.”
He has won critical praise directing both arthouse films and broad commercial hits, such as the “Ocean’s Eleven” trilogy.
Payne said the two met when Soderbergh was completing “sex, lies and videotape” and Payne was finishing his UCLA thesis film. They have since become friends.
Other Soderbergh directing credits include “Out of Sight,” a crime caper starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez; “The Good German,” a noir war film starring Clooney and Tobey Maguire; “The Informant,” in which Matt Damon played a corporate whistle-blower; and “Che,” starring Del Toro as the Marxist revolutionary.
Soderbergh’s producing credits include “Good Night and Good Luck,” “Syriana,” “I’m Not Here” and “Michael Clayton,” all Oscar-nominated. He often serves as his own cinematographer and editor, using his parents’ names in the onscreen credits.
Tickets to Feature III go on sale Oct. 20. Single tickets are $35 for the concert-hall interview; $150 for the interview plus a post-event party; and $250 for a private reception with the evening’s special guests. Event co-chairmen are the Weitz family.
For information, visit www.filmstreams.org or call 402-933-0259, ext. 11.
Contact the writer: 444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com
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