ISFFH announces Mike Medavoy as recipient of the 2008 lifetime achievement award

Robin Saban, Founder and President of the ISFFH, is pleased to announce Mike Medavoy as the recipient of the Life Time Achievement Award to be presented at the 6th annual ISFFH Awards Ceremony on Sun. Nov. 9, 2008 at Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn in North Hollywood.

Mike Medavoy began his career at Universal Studios in 1964. He rose from the mailroom to a casting director. In 1965, he became an agent at General Artist Corporation and then VP at Creative Management Agency. Joining International Famous Agency as VP in charge of the motion picture department in 1971, he worked with such prestigious clients as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Gene Wilder, Jeanne Moreau, and Jean-Louis Trintignant among others. United Artists brought him in as senior VP of production in 1974 where he was part of the team responsible for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, “Rocky”,and “Annie Hall”, all of which won the Best Picture Oscars over three successive years in 1975, 1976, and 1977. In 1990, Medavoy became Chairman of TriStar Pictures. Of all the films Medavoy has been involved with, sixteen have been nominated for Best Picture Oscars and seven have won Best Picture Academy Awards and numerous international festival awards.

Today, as chairman and co-founder of Phoenix Pictures, Medavoy has brought to the screen “The People vs. Larry Flynt”, “The Mirror Has Two Faces”, “U-Turn”, “Apt Pupil”, “ The Thin Red Line”, “The Sixth Day”, “Basic” and “Holes.” These films have received many nominations including from the DGA and WGA for Terrence Malick and they have won several awards. Two of his films, “The Thin Red Line” and “The People vs. Larry Flint”, a Milos Forman movie received Academy nominations. Medavoy has started production on both “Shutter Island,” a film directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and “Shanghai,” starring John Cusack.

In 2002, Simon & Schuster published Medavoy’s best-selling book, “You’re Only As Good As Your Next One: 100 Great Films, 100 Good Films and 100 For Which I Should Be Shot”. Mike is also currently working on a book regarding the impact of media on U.S. Foreign Policy together with co-author Nathan Gardel, editor of the National Political Quarterly.

Medavoy has also made a mark in his community, earning numerous awards. He has served on many boards and is one of the original founding members of the Board of Governors of the Sundance Institute (1978) and is chairman emeritus of the American Cinematheque and the Stella Adler Actors Studio. In addition, he was also inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame and received a star on Hollywood Blvd (2005).

Throughout his career Mike Medavoy has also been active in politics; he actively participated in President Clinton’s election campaigns in 1992 and 1996. In 2002, Governor Gray Davis appointed Mike to the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center’s Executive Advisory Board.

Mike was born in Shanghai, China in 1941 of Russian-Jewish parents, and lived in Chile from 1947 to 1957. At UCLA he was in the honors program and is involved with a number of organizations. He is married to Irena Medavoy, who is a founder of Team Safe-T and the Industry Task Force, as a charity executive and fundraiser. She is also a national finance chair for Senator Obama. Mike Medavoy has two sons, Brian and Nicholas, and resides in Beverly Hills, California.

After years of work in film and theater and passionate about the opportunity to offer student filmmakers well-deserved recognition for their talents, Robin Saban founded the International Student Film Festival Hollywood, focused solely on students in September of 2003.

This year the winner of Best Comedy will receive a paid distribution deal from Fun Little Movies.

The ISFFH is sponsored by American Building Supply, Wells Fargo, CRA/LA, CisCorp, Creative Handbook, Production Hub, Discmakers and Fun Little Movies.