Oliver Stone speaks on career of “Satire and Controversy” at The Banff Centre March 16

Banff, Alberta, January 24, 2013 -- Academy Award-winning director, producer, and screenwriter Oliver Stone will appear at The Banff Centre March 16 for a rare, one-on-one conversation before a live Canadian audience. Engaging the prolific American filmmaker in a conversation on “Satire and Controversy” will be Ian Brown, Globe & Mail columnist and the new Banff Centre Globe Canada correspondent.

Oliver Stone was born in New York City in 1946, and served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam before studying filmmaking at New York University alongside Martin Scorsese and other teachers. His first critical success – alongside the controversial reviews that have followed him through his career – came with 1978’s “Midnight Express”. He won his first Oscar® with that film, for Best Adapted Screenplay, along with a Golden Globe Award.

Stone’s career in film caught fire in the mid-1980s with the premiere of “Platoon” in 1986, the first of a trio of films he wrote and directed about the Vietnam War. “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Heaven and Earth” followed in 1989 and 1993. “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July” earned Stone the Best Director Oscar.

Credited with more than 20 full-length feature films, Stone’s work includes directing “Wall Street”, “Natural Born Killers”, “Nixon”, “W”, “Alexander”, “JFK”, “The Door”, “Talk Radio”, and “Salvador.” He also wrote or co-wrote “Midnight Express”, “Scarface”, “Conan the Barbarian”, “Year of the Dragon”, “Evita”, and “8 Million Ways to Die”.

Stone also courted controversy with last year’s “Untold History of the United States”, a TV series aired on Showtime. “It’s an upside-down version of American history, which is to say it takes everything you thought you knew about America and questions it,” Stone said in an interview with filmcomment magazine.

Satire and Controversy with Oliver Stone, presented as A Heather and N. Murray Edwards Legendary Leaders Event, will include a question and answer period for the audience. Tickets for the event go on sale on January 31.

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