Filmmaker Ang Lee (李安) was honored as the first Taiwanese laureate of this year’s Praemium Imperiale, a global arts prize awarded annually by the Japan Art Association, for promoting “the cultures and arts of the world” at an awards ceremony in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Lee, who has won two Oscars for best director, was honored alongside four others by the Japan Art Association, with each receiving a medal from Princess Hitachi at the ceremony.
“Japanese cinema has a long history of cultural influence, especially for Asian filmmakers and I’m no exception. As the first person from Taiwan to receive this award, I’m proud and deeply grateful,” Lee told a news conference in Tokyo on Monday.
Photo: AFP
“Theater is like a temple for me and a movie is a ritual through which we hold a mirror up to our lives and hope to touch the truth,” he said. “I’d like to think that my career is a never-ending school, where I learn about cinema and about myself and about the world. There is no end to that learning.”
Lee was honored in the theater/film category in the 35th edition of the awards ceremony, which is widely considered Japan’s arts equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
He first won an Oscar when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) was named best foreign film in 2000. He then won best director awards for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 and Life of Pi in 2012.
This year’s laureates also include French conceptual artist Sophie Galle in the painting category, Colombian artist Doris Salcedo in sculpture, Voluntary Architects’ Network founder Shigeru Ban from Japan in architecture and Portugal-born pianist Maria Joao Pires in music.
During the ceremony on Tuesday, Princess Hitachi said the arts are crucial for bringing people together, enriching lives and consoling those caught up in conflicts.
Former Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida said the Japan Art Association aims to promote world peace through the arts, a wish of the late Prince Takamatsu, who served as the honorary patron of the association for 58 years until early 1987.
On the sidelines of Tuesday’s ceremony, Lee told reporters that Asian voices are important in the film industry when fewer people are going to cinemas, news Web site Japan Forward reported on Wednesday.
“We need to cherish our cultural heritage and speak up in cinema,” he said.
The Praemium Imperiale prize was established in 1988 when the Japan Art Association marked its centennial and in honor of the late Prince Takamatsu, who died the previous year.
Princess Hitachi was installed to succeed his role as the honorary patron.
Six artists “who transcend national and ethnic boundaries” with their “exceptional achievements,” including Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei (貝聿銘), French film director Marcel Carne, and painters Willem de Kooning and David Hockney received the first edition of the prize in 1989.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
RSS