David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg's reputation as an auteur has been firmly established by his uniquely personal body of work which includes: Shivers, Rabid, Fast Company, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash, eXistenZ, The Dead Zone, M. Butterfly, Spider and Cosmopolis. Cronenberg has collaborated with Viggo Mortensen on three of his films: A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and A Dangerous Method. More recently, he completed the filming of Maps to the Stars, scripted by novelist Bruce Wagner and starring Julianne Moore, John Cusack and Mia Wasikowska.

Frequently lauded as one of the world's greatest and most influential directors, Cronenberg's films have earned him critical praise and recognition internationally. In 1999, he presided over the jury at the Cannes Film Festival and was awarded the Festival's lifetime achievement award, the Carrosse d'Or, in 2006. Also that year, Cronenberg worked with the Art Gallery of Ontario as a guest curator for the exhibition Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths and Disasters, 1962-1964. He created an innovative soundtrack audio guide with additional commentary by several of Warhol's contemporaries, including actor Dennis Hopper, film critic Amy Taubin, and artist James Rosenquist. In 2008, Cronenberg brought his film The Fly to the stage as an opera for the Théâtre du Châtelet and LA Opera. Howard Shore composed the music, and David Henry Hwang wrote the libretto.

Recognition of Cronenberg's contribution to art and culture has included an appointment as an Officer to the Order of Canada in 2003, investiture in France's Order of Arts and Letters in 1990 and the Légion d'Honneur in 2009. Cronenberg was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in 2011. 

During Cronenberg's studies at the University of Toronto, he became interested in film and made two 16mm shorts: Transfer, and From the Drain. Shortly after he made his first films in 35mm: Stereo and Crimes of the Future, both shot in the late 1960s. In those works, he established and explored some of the themes and concerns that would characterize and define much of his later work – including violence and sexuality, reality and altered reality, and social satire and biological horror.

Cronenberg's first commercial feature was 1975's Shivers (a.k.a. They Came From Within or The Parasite Murders), which became one of the fastest-recouping movies in the history of Canadian film. Within a decade, he was making formidable films, such as Videodrome and The Dead Zone, for major studios. The Dead Zone won three out of the five prizes at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, as well as seven Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations.

His next films were The Fly, a remake of the 1958 horror classic, which won the Academy Award for Best Makeup (1987); and Dead Ringers, starring Jeremy Irons, which earned Cronenberg the Best Director award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. 

Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, adapted from William S. Burroughs's novel and works, garnered him the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Director, and the New York Film Critics Circle's citations for Best Screenplay. Naked Lunch also won eight Genie Awards (Canada's equivalent of the Academy Award), including Best Picture and Best Director.

Crash brought him a Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes International Film Festival, in addition to multiple Genie Awards. eXistenZ won the Silver Bear Award at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival. A History of Violence, starring his Eastern Promises leading man Viggo Mortensen, received a host of accolades, including Best Director and Best Film on the Village Voice Film Critics Poll, as well as two Academy Award nominations.

Cronenberg's more recent short films are The Nest, Camera or At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World. The Nest and Camera were both commission by the Toronto International Film Festival. Cronenberg starred in At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World, which was made for the Chacun son cinema collection of films commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Cannes International Film Festival. Cronenberg has also acted in Gus Van Sant's To Die For, Clive Barker's Nightbreed and Don McKellar's Last Night.

Retrospectives of Cronenberg's work have been held in Japan, the U.S., the U.K., France, Brazil, Italy, Portugal, and Canada. Books on Cronenberg and his films include The Shape of Rage – the Films of David Cronenberg, The Artist as Monster: The Cinema of David Cronenberg, Cronenberg on Cronenberg and a collection of interviews published by Cahiers du Cinema. Cronenberg debuted his own first novel, Consumed, in Fall of 2014.

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