MADRID Helicopter spraying napalm on Vietnam to the sound of the Valkyries by Wagner or a bloody horse head under the covers of a victim of the mafia: the “icons” created by the US filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola won him the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts.
Author of classics like “Apocalypse Now” or “The Godfather” saga, Coppola, 76, is a “thematic and formal renewal” jury president stressed in announcing the award Wednesday in a brief televised ceremony from Oviedo, in northern Spain, AFP reported.
forever etched in the retina of the spectators, “his explorations around the power and the horrors and absurdity of war have it transcended his art, becoming collective and universal imaginary icons and contemporary culture, “he said.
The award for the Arts is the first of the eight that each year since 1981 awarded the Prince of Asturias Foundation, now renamed Princess of Asturias Foundation in honor of the small Leonor de Borbón, 9, new heir to the throne of Spain after the proclamation of his father, Philip VI as king following the abdication of Juan Carlos I in June.
Born April 7, 1939 in the midst of a Italian-American family in Detroit, in the northeastern United States, and trained in art dramatic and fine arts at universities in New York and Los Angeles, Coppola has written an extensive filmography that started in 1970 with the war “Patton” which won the first of his seven Oscars.
However, He exalted the work that was “The Godfather” (1972), adapted from a novel by Mario Puzo, elected in 2014 as “the best movie ever” by the Hollywood industry, in which an aging Marlon Brando plays the boss mobster Vito Corleone.
Filmed in 52 days with a cast that included Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and Diane Keaton, “he became one of the blockbusters of the moment”, won three awards in Hollywood and was followed by two sequels in 1974 and 1990, reminded the Princess of Asturias Foundation.
“The 70s ended for Coppola with the premiere of ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979), a free adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness’. The film is it included among the great masterpieces of cinema and at the time was the largest budget in its history, “he said.
Launched in the Philippines in 1977, the film, also starring Brando and a then-unknown Martin Sheen, had to survive multiple vicissitudes-a hurricane included- to see the light two years later thanks to the tens of millions of dollars the Coppola put his own pocket.
” Visionary and innovative, Coppola has endorsed the concept of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, where nothing his watchful eye of director and escapes its genuine commitment to do independent films within the machinery of the big studios, “said the Foundation.
His figure “is essential to understand the transformation and contradictions of the film industry and art, whose growth has been instrumental,” meanwhile estimated the jury.
1980s, with films like “Rebels”, “Peggy Sue Got Married” or “The Rumble”, launched the careers of a new generation of artists including his nephew Nicolas Cage met and his daughter, Sofia Coppola , now converted into a recognized filmmaker.
In 2009 returned to the theme of Italian immigration, but this time in Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century, with “Tetro” filmed in Argentina.
worth 50,000 euros (about $ 56,000) and a sculpture created by Joan Miró, the award will be presented, along with the other winners in seven categories in the fall at a ceremony in Oviedo, headquarters Princess of Asturias Foundation.
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