Prince of Asturias Awards 1981–2014. Speeches

3 P rince of A sturias A wards 1981-2014. S peeches Laureates. Excerpts When —on the occasion of being in Madrid for the first time to stage the opera— I entered the room containing Goya’s “Black Paintings” in the Prado Museum, I received a shock that I shall probably never forget. I actually started shaking and had difficulty remaining standing. I quickly left the room because I could not cope with it. But I had to go back. Whenever my obligations at the Teatro Real allowed me to do so, I would return to expose myself to the sensations that this work arouses in me. I believe this experience with Art, which affected me with a vehemence almost unknown to me, can provide a delightful pretext to talk about the reason why I am here today as Laureate in the category of the Arts: the existent or non-existent possibilities of the influence of artistic creation or contemporary filmmaking. Even though it is by no means certain that my own field of work, filmmaking, can even be considered Art. Since its invention at the beginning of the last century, the fairground nature of most cinematic production has done all it can to prevent it from being considered so. Due to the particularity of being the most expensive of all artistic endeavours, while at the same time the one that is most ephemeral and dependent on the market, filmmaking finds itself in a particularly strained situation. The primary task of any film is to find as broad an audience as possible in order at least to cover its production costs and ensure the possibility of continuing to work with a certain degree of stability. As in other economic sectors, mistakes are not tolerated: those who repeatedly commit them are unlikely to have the opportunity to continue working. Added to this is the aggravating factor of competition from mass media, which, through their trivialization of aesthetic criteria and contents, necessitated by their dependency on ratings, do not precisely represent a sophisticated audiovisual school for the potential filmgoer. Michael Haneke — Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts 2013 Excerpt from the speech given on the occasion of receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts on 25/10/2013.