Paul Mazursky will receive Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s (LAFCA) Career Achievement Award “for his collective work and contributions to film”, the body announced last night [24].

“It’s impossible to imagine American independent cinema in its current form without Paul Mazursky, in all his multi-hyphenate glory,” LAFCA president and Screen International critic Brent Simon said.

“From his work as an actor, including in Stanley Kubrick’s first film, Fear And Desire, to his genre-spanning career as a writer and director, Mazursky is a great figure of world cinema as well as an American original, and LAFCA is proud to honour him.”

Mazursky’s credits include Harry And Tonto, BlumeIn Love and An Unmarried Woman.

In a statement LAFCA paid tribute to his contribution to cinema when it said: “A masterful moviemaker who conceived his projects, wrote or co-wrote his screenplays, and brought his own distinguished acting experience to bear in extracting nuanced and moving performances from a whole generation of screen talents, Paul Mazursky fought the battles for warm, humane film content within the studio system, and won them all.”

The statement continued later: “Clear-eyed and affirmative, his comic vision of Los Angeles itself and of American life more broadly speaks to our time and to the ages the way the films of Jean Renoir and the plays of Moliere do.

The 36th annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards ceremony will be held on January 15, 2011.

Award winners will be voted on and announced at LAFCA’s annual voting meeting on December 12.

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