David Cronenberg

. 15 March _
(73 years)
David Cronenberg
15 March 1943 
Toronto, Ontario, Canada 
5' 9" (1,75 m)

He is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, actor and author. Cronenberg is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection…

David Cronenberg, also known as the King of Venereal Horror or the Baron of Blood, was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1943. His father was a journalist, and his mother was a piano player. After showing an inclination for literature at an early age (he wrote and published eerie short stories, thus following his father's path) and for music (playing classical guitar until he was 12), Cronenberg graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in Literature after switching from the science department. He reached the cult status of horror-meister with the gore-filled, modern-vampire variations of Vinieron de dentro de... (1975) and Rabia (1977), following an experimental apprenticeship in independent film-making and in Canadian television programs.

Cronenberg gained popularity with the head-exploding, telepathy-based Scanners (1981) after the release of the much underrated, controversial, and autobiographical Cromosoma 3 (1979). Cronenberg become a sort of a mass media guru with Videodrome (1983), a shocking investigation of the hazards of reality-morphing television and a prophetic critique of contemporary aesthetics. The issues of tech-induced mutation of the human body and topics of the prominent dichotomy between body and mind were back again inLa zona muerta (1983) and La mosca (1986), both bright examples of a personal film-making identity, even if both films are based on mass-entertainment materials: the first being a rendition of a Stephen King best-seller, the latter a remake of famous American horror movie.

With Inseparables (1988) and El almuerzo desnudo (1991), the Canadian director, no more a mere genre movie-maker but a fully realized auteur, got the acclaim of international critics. Such profound statements on modern humanity and ever-changing society are prominent in the provocative Crash (1996) and in the virtual reality essay ofeXistenZ (1999), both of which well fared at the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals. In the last two filmic projects Spider (2002) and Una historia de violencia (2005), Cronenberg avoids expressing his teratologic and oniric expressionism in favor of a more psychological exploration of human contradictions and idiosyncrasies. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Marco Rambaldi<rambaldi@hotmail.com>


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