Boorman's career-long fascination with ambivalent or ambiguous protagonists reaches an apogee in the veritable antiheroof The General, a character closely modeled on real-life Dublin gangster Martin Cahill, who in the 1980s managed to run afoul not just of the law but also the Catholic Church and IRA. Boorman himself had a run-in with Cahill, who burgled the director’s house, stealing the gold record for Deliverance’s “Dueling Banjos.” In marked contrast to the large-scale canvases of Hope and Glory or The Emerald Forest, The General’s sober black-and-white cinematography marked a return to the simplicity of Boorman's early BBC documentaries and the unadorned force of Point Blank.

The Magners Irish Film Festival’s Excellence Award acknowledges those artists whose work contributes in a significant and lasting way to the representation of Ireland and the Irish on screen. A resident of Ireland since 1969, Mr. Boorman has been a vital and influential figure in contemporary Irish cinema. Besides shooting many of his films in Ireland, Mr. Boorman played an important role in the state-sponsored Irish Film Board in the early 1980s, when he helped launch the career of Neil Jordan by producing Jordan’s first film Angel (1982). More recently, Mr. Boorman has insightfully addressed the country’s social and economic transformations in the highly acclaimed The General (1998) and the controversial The Tiger’s Tail (2006), both starring (2006 Excellence Award honoree) Brendan Gleeson. Following the screening of The General, this ceremony will include clips from many of Mr. Boorman’s films and remarks by the filmmaker himself.