Venice 79, awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement by Catherine Deneuve

“I am very happy and proud of this award, because I come back to the Venice Film Festival, where I have already been many more times. I have a long history with the festival, I have many good memories. I am still here and it is a success, because I still want to work in cinema , my son, and our world.” This is how French actress Catherine Deneuve, dressed in a long, flaming red dress, welcomed the golden lion for the fulfillment of a lifetime bestowed upon her this evening by the President of the Venice Biennale, Roberto Secoto, at the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema in Ville. Lido during the opening ceremony of the 79th edition.

The motive behind the award was formulated with a tribute read by French director and screenwriter Arnaud Desplechin. “Dear Catherine, I came to the 1964 Venice Film Festival out of competition, with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg. And it was a revolution. Even children know it: it is a revolution, our science, the same science as Marilyn. She has become self-aware and there is nothing more beautiful than her. This Self-opening is admirable. With Demi crying, I still see her on the stage. That station, yesterday, today.. She never stopped being moved. Crazy. And above all I want to share her love of cinema. Only cinema, irreducible …”.

“I don’t know any woman or man who loves cinema very passionately. She is my hero, my hero – said Arnaud Desplechin – I once wrote that she, Catherine Deneuve, is one of the most important filmmakers I know. For her roles, she invented a whole work. Each of her films was signed by her, with a sure trait I want to call tonight: Modernism. Truffaut or Stendhal, who loved Italy so much. Stendhal would take her camel when they had the misfortune of twelve feet tall. He hated Academia. Stendhal preferred life. Besides Truffaut, she chose life and created prose cinema. From modern prose. All cinema was nourished by Deneuve style, at machine gun speed and slept like a dream. Am I exaggerating? In 1967 Buñuel’s Bella di Giorno was presented in Venice and the world could not understand The sweetness of resemblance and scandal. She has a taste, yes, a taste for the unmistakable, impure salt of life as soon as she appears on the screen. It is his signature. Cinema and life is never as beautiful as it is impure. The love of the novel is present in all his films. With Téchiné, Wargnier or Bercot, He managed to reinvent the cinema of the novel, but I don’t I know how to make a list of movies. I want to be here tonight in Venice where the Golden Lion will be awarded. I want to remember the Kore Eda, Le Vent de la Nuit, or Place Vendôme which has already been crowned. Catherine, tonight I want to tell you that I know one artist as proud and free as you. It’s Bob Dylan. He was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Golden Lion. Ma’am, you have made my life a magic. His freedom is what I want. On behalf of all the onlookers, thank you.”