WINSTON-SALEM – Academy Award-winning producer Saul Zaentz will be a guest artist in the North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking next week. 

Next Friday and Saturday, Sept. 26 and 27, Zaentz will conduct master seminars with students, and the school will screen some of his finest work. 

Zaentz is perhaps best-known for producing the films THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1997), which won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture; AMADEUS (1985), which won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture; and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1976), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture (with co-producer Michael Douglas).  

AMADEUS starred NCSA alumnus Tom Hulce in the title role, and earned him an Oscar nomination. 

Other of Zaentz’s films include AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD (1991), THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988), THE MOSQUITO COAST (1986), THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978); THREE WARRIORS (1978), and PAYDAY (1972). 

He has been described by The New York Times as “perhaps the last of the great independent producers.” A Variety profile called him “as close to an idealized version of what an independent filmmaker is as exists.”  

His awards include the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award “for consistently high quality of motion picture production,” presented at the 1997 Academy Awards ceremony. 

Today Zaentz oversees the Saul Zaentz Company and the Saul Zaentz Film Center, a post-production sound and film editing facility for studio and independent filmmakers in Berkeley, Calif.

For more information, or to schedule an interview, call Marla Carpenter at 336-770-3337 in the public relations office at NCSA.

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