JOE DANTE: GUEST OF HONOR

Joe Dante started out cutting trailers at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and made his solo feature debut with the hit lm Piranha in 1978. After directing a segment of Twilight Zone – The Movie, he then helmed Gremlins in 1984, a Spielberg Amblin Entertainment production for Warner. A blockbuster, Gremlins grossed upwards of $200 million and the rest is movie history.

Highlights from the exceptional career that followed include Explorers (1985), Innerspace (1987) and The Burbs with Tom Hanks (1989). Dante then followed up with Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Matinee (1993) and Small Soldiers for Dreamworks/Universal in 1998.

Television owes much to Dante’s episodes for cult series such as Amazing Stories, Twilight Zone and Masters of Horror. His “Homecoming” episode for the latter was critically acclaimed and cited as the best political lm of 2005. In 2007, he began the innovative Trailers from Hell series, featuring directors commenting on the lms that in uenced them. His most recent works include the 3D thriller The Hole (2009) and Burying the Ex (2014). Honoured the world over by prestigious festivals, cinematheques and lm museums, few directors can boast such diversity of appeal. Critics, cinephiles and mainstream audiences of many ages are drawn to his Dantean mix of horror, comedy, subversion and parody, in films that are wildly entertaining and never irrelevant.