Hollywood
Djordje Kadijevic to receive lifetime achievement award at Grossmann Festival
NEW DELHI: Serbian writer and director Djordje Kadijevic, author of numerous unforgettable cinematic masterpieces and pioneer of fantastic cinema in ex-Yu region will receive the Honorary Vicous Cat Award for lifetime achievement on the closing day of the 10th Grossmann Fantastic Film and Wine Festival.
The festival which began on 15 July will conclude on 19 July at Ljutomer, Slovenia.
Kadijevic already had got a place among the giants of cinema with his debut feature, the gloomy wartime drama A Festivity (Praznik), a multi-layered masterpiece set in World War 2. Among the fans of the fantastic he is most known for his cult TV film She-Butterfly (Leptirica), the first Yugoslavian horror film. He is also an art critic, essayist, publicist and art theorist.
Kadijevic was born in Sibenik, Croatia, in 1933. An art historian by education, he started making in the late 1960s. His next films The Trek (Pohod, 1968), The Fiery One (zarki, 1970) and The Colonel’s Wife (Pukovnikovica, 1971) were also dealing with war. Very soon he also began working for television, his first TV film being medieval drama A Miracle (Cudo, 1971).
In 1973, he made three groundbreaking fantastic films for the TV series entitled Tales of Mystery and Imagination: She-Butterfly, which was initially received with shock and panic, grim gothic romance A Maiden’s Music (DeviCanska svirka) and metaphysical dark fantasy The Protected One (Sticenik). He continued his career on televison with splendid movies such as The Oath (Zakletva, 1974) and The Death of Karadjordje (Karadordeva smrt, 1983), and award-winning TV Series Vuk Karadzic (1987-1988). Gothic horror A Holy Place (Sveto mesto, 1990) was his long awaited return to a film made for cinemas.
A special retrospective will include his films A Miracle, She-Butterfly, The Protected One and A Holy Place.
Hollywood
Remembering Chuck Norris: the man, the myth, the legend at 86
From martial arts legend to internet folklore, fans honour his final level up
KAUAI: The world lost a legend on 19 March 2026, when Chuck Norris died aged 86. For a man long treated as immortal in internet folklore, the news felt almost unreal. Yet in true Norris fashion, the farewell has been less about mourning and more about myth-making.
Just days before his passing, on his 86th birthday, Norris shared a video from Kauaʻi, Hawaii, showing him sparring under the sun. His caption was characteristically wry: “I don’t age. I level up.” It now reads like a final wink to fans who had spent years elevating him to near-superhuman status.
His death followed a sudden medical emergency while on holiday. He passed away peacefully, surrounded by family, who described him not just as a global symbol of strength, but as a devoted husband, father and grandfather.
Online, grief quickly gave way to tribute in the language Norris helped popularise. Social media filled with one last wave of “Chuck Norris Facts”, the tongue-in-cheek myths that turned him into a digital demigod. The jokes wrote themselves, as always. Death did not take Norris, it finally dared to meet him.
Behind the humour, however, lies a formidable real-world legacy.
Long before the memes, Norris was Carlos Ray Norris, a decorated martial artist. After serving in the US Air Force, he rose to become a six-time world professional middleweight karate champion. His on-screen duel with Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon remains one of cinema’s most iconic fight sequences.
Through the 1980s, he became the face of action cinema with films such as Missing in Action and The Delta Force, embodying a stoic, no-nonsense hero. In the 1990s, he reached living rooms worldwide as Cordell Walker in Walker, Texas Ranger, blending Western grit with martial arts flair.
Off-screen, his work carried equal weight. His foundation, Kickstart Kids, continues to teach martial arts to at-risk youth, focusing on discipline and self-worth. He also founded Chun Kuk Do, a martial arts system that trained thousands.
What made Norris unique was not just his strength, but his willingness to laugh at it. When the internet transformed him into an exaggerated symbol of invincibility, he embraced the joke. In doing so, he bridged generations, from cinema-goers to meme-makers.
His passing marks more than the loss of an action star. It signals the fading of a rare cultural crossover, where genuine athletic prowess met Hollywood heroism and early internet humour.
For many, remembering Chuck Norris means recalling a time when heroes were simple, punches were decisive and the internet still felt like a playground of shared jokes.
And if the myths are to be believed, this is not quite the end. It is simply Chuck Norris moving on to his next level.
