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Woody Allen
—
Prince of Asturias Award
for the Arts
2002
Excerpt from the speech given on
the occasion of receiving the Prince
of Asturias Award for the Arts on
25/10/2002.
Now only in the European cinema again we are starting to see there are things that are really
meaningful. It is extremely difficult for a thinking person to find anything to see on a Saturday
night in the United States. It is only the few European films that find their way to the United States,
not just Europe, but also films from the Middle East, from Iran, from China, from Japan, from
South America. These films are the films that are most interesting and the most provocative and
the most substantial to those of us who still regard movie making and cinema watching as an art
form.
And I want to be brief and just say that we look to European film makers for leadership at this
point. The leadership is not coming from the United States. The interest, as I say, in the United
States is in the production of film, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars are money lost.
The advertising of a single film to open it up in the United States is like all the money Buñuel spent
in his entire life making films, and the situation has got completely out of hand. And those of us
who still have hope for the cinema as an art form look to the European film makers. When I left
New York, the most exciting film in the city of the time was Spanish, Pedro Almodovar’s one.
I hope that Europeans will continue to lead the way in film making because at the moment it is
not coming from the United States.
25
th
O
ctober
2002
