Actors Jon Voight and Willem Dafoe and homemade movie pioneers George & Mike Kuchar will be among the Vanguard Award honorees at CineVegas 2009.

Trevor Groth, the festival’s artistic director, also announced that video game designers Jenova Chan and Kellee Santiago will receive the inaugural Planet Illogica Award for Excellence In New Media. The new award is for video game artists who are pushing the boundaries of storytelling. The pair have worked on games including Cloud and Flower.

The awards will be presented June 14 at the Palms Casino Resort. Dafoe will participate in a conversation earlier that afternoon following a screening of his 1982 film The Loveless. Voight’s tribute will include a screening of the newly remastered Lookin’ To Get Out followed by a Q&A with Voight and other guests. As for the Kuchars, they will show a collection of new shorts on June 14 and a new documentary about the brothers, It Came From Kuchar directed by Jennifer Kroot, will play during the festival.

“What an honor it is for CineVegas to have the opportunity to recognize the accomplishments of these esteemed actors, directors and artists at our 11th annual Festival,” said Groth in a statement. “In addition to paying tribute to such powerful acting forces as Jon Voight and Willem Dafoe, as well as two pioneers of underground cinema the Kuchar Brothers, we are also proud to partner with Planet Illogica to award Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago, two revolutionaries in the video gaming design world, for their outstanding achievement in the world of new media and as trailblazers in a compelling new era of storytelling.”

The 11th-annual CineVegas Film Festival will run June 10-15 in Las Vegas.

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