Martin Scorsese
2018 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts
Biography
Martin Scorsese is an Academy Award-winning Director and one of the most influential filmmakers working today. He has directed critically acclaimed, award-winning films including Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, which won an Academy Award for Best Director and Best Picture, Shutter Island, and Hugo for which he received a Golden Globe for Best Director. His 2013 film, The Wolf of Wall Street received DGA, BAFTA and Academy Award nominations for Best Director, as well as a Golden Globe and Academy Award nomination for Best Film. His latest feature, Silence, is based on the acclaimed novel by Shusaku Endo.
Scorsese has directed numerous documentaries including the Peabody Award winning No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and Elia Kazan: A Letter to Elia; as well as Italianamerican, The Last Waltz, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies, Il Mio Viaggio in Italia, Public Speaking, and George Harrison: Living in the Material World, for which Scorsese received Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming and Outstanding Nonfiction Special. Scorsese co-directed The 50 Year Argument in 2014 with his long time documentary editor David Tedeschi. Scorsese executive produced the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, winning an Emmy and DGA Award for directing the pilot episode. He is currently at work on his next feature, The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, as well as The Rolling Thunder Revue, a film about Bob Dylan’s 1975 tour and a documentary on SCTV. Scorsese is the founder and chair of The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and protection of motion picture history.
Taxi driver
1976
Awards
Scorsese won his first major international award at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival with this event’s Palme d’Or for Taxi Driver, which has been followed by numerous other awards for his work. In summary, his films have garnered twenty Oscars in different categories, eleven Golden Globes and twenty-three BAFTAs.
In addition, Scorsese holds honorary degrees from the University of Bologna (Italy) and the Lodz National Film School (Poland) and, among other distinctions, has received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival (1995), the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award (1997), the Directors Guild of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2003), the Kennedy Center Honors (2007), the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (2010) and the Lumière Award at the Grand Lyon Film Festival in 2015. In May 2018, he is to receive the Carrosse d’Or from the French Directors Guild in Cannes during the tribute to be given in his honour at the Directors’ Fortnight.
Minutes of the Jury
At its meeting in Oviedo, the Jury for the 2018 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, composed of Bárbara Allende Gil de Biedma, Juan Manuel Bonet Planes, María de Corral López-Dóriga, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart y Martínez de Irujo, Duke of Alba, Sergio Gutiérrez Sánchez, Joan Matabosch Grifoll, Alfredo Pérez de Armiñán y de la Serna, Sandra Rotondo Urcola, Emilio Sagi Álvarez-Rayón, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón de Angelis, Patricia Urquiola Hidalgo, Aarón Zapico Braña and Miguel Zugaza Miranda, chaired by José Lladó Fernández-Urrutia and with José Antonio Caicoya Cores acting as secretary, has agreed to grant the 2018 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts to Martin Scorsese.
Above all, the Jury recognizes the importance of Martin Scorsese’s creative work. He is, in fact, one of the most outstanding film directors of the movement to renew filmmaking that emerged in the 1970s. He has directed more than twenty films that now form part of the history of cinema and continues to work unceasingly, masterfully combining innovation and classicism in his films.
He has also undertaken intense and wide-ranging work in recovering, restoring and disseminating historical film heritage throughout the world, via projects such as The Film Foundation and the World Cinema Project. All this makes him an indisputable figure in contemporary filmmaking.
Oviedo, 25th April 2018
