Palm Beach Intl Film Festival

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For its distinguished honorees this year, the 15th edition of the Palm Beach International Film Festival pays tribute to a local legend and a star on the rise. This evening at the recently-opened swanky The Omphoy Ocean Resort (www.omphoy.com), the Festival will present its Lifetime Achievement Award to  local Florida legend, actor/director/producer Burt Reynolds.  The Festival's Horizon Award will be given to actor Quinton Aaron, who recently starred opposite Oscar winner Sandra Bullock in the box office champ The Blind Side.

Reynolds, who lives in Palm Beach County, is a long time supporter of the Festival, stated that "I am truly honored to be recognized by the Palm Beach International Film Festival for something I love and am passionate about doing. It is especially meaningful to have this award come from the festival in my hometown.”

Burt In The Buff 

BURT REYNOLDS is an Academy Award nominee, as well as an Emmy Award and Golden Globe winner. For over 50 years, he has enjoyed enormous success as an actor and director in feature films, television and stage productions. He came to prominence in 1972 for his work in the intense buddy drama Deliverance. He soon became one of the biggest film stars of the 1970s and 1980s, with a rascally image enhanced by a semi-nude centerfold in Playgirl Magazine that created shock waves around the world. Some well known titles from that period include Starting Over, White Lightning, Semi‐Tough, Hooper, Stroker Ace, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The Longest Yard and Smokey and the Bandit.

He reached a career high point in the early 1990s with his role as an affable if somewhat sleazy porno film director in Paul Thomas Anderson's breakthrough film Boogie Nights. That role won him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win as Best Supporting Actor, as well as critical nods from The New  York Film Critics, The Los Angeles Film Critics, The Chicago Film Critics and The National Society of Film Critics.

His most recent films include A Bunch of Amateurs, which was selected for the 2008 Royal Film Performance in England; Broken Bridges opposite Willie Nelson, The Longest Yard with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, The Dukes of Hazzard, and End Game with  Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Reynolds is also being honored for his commitment to education, exemplified by the program he created to give college students schoastic credit and wages for their work while obtaining an education at the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theater Training, located in Palm Beach County. He recently created the Burt Reynolds Institute for Film And Theater to help local student and fledgling filmmakers learn about the business.

Clinton Aaron in THE BLIND SIDE

Practically no one this past year had as auspicious a film debut as actor CLINTON AARON, who starred as the homeless black teenager who is taken in by a wealthy southern woman, played by Oscar winner Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side. In the film, based on a true story, he plays  Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher, whose football career was made possible by the generosity and support of the rich white family that took him in when he was at a life crisis of homelessness and abuse.

Born in the Bronx, New York in 1984, the 25 year old actor began singing at an early age, inspired by the career of Michael Jackson. He made his film debut in the Michel Gondry film Be Kind Rewind, opposite Jack Black and Mos Def. He also appeared in Fighting, with Channing Tatum and Terrence Howard. An indie short film, Mr. Brooklyn, which he starred in, was screened at last year's Festival....so this marks an auspicious return for this young man with a future.

For more information on this and other special events at the 15th Palm Beach International Film Festival, check out: www.pbifilmfest.org

Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Dailies Editor