TAIPEI, April 12 – Taiwanese lm director Ang Lee received a BAFTA Fellowship at this year’s British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) ceremony held virtually Monday during the COVID-19 pandemic, reported Central News Agency.
This year’s ceremony was broadcast live from London’s Royal Albert Hall, with English actor Hugh Grant presenting Lee with the award, which he accepted online.
“It’s a tremendous honour to receive the BAFTA Academy Fellowship and be counted among such brilliant filmmakers,” Lee said via a video feed upon receiving the award.
He noted England has been particularly good to him in his career, adding that Britain “was the only market where ‘The Ice Storm’ made any money.”
Britain also served as a “second film school” when he was directing the 1995 lm ‘Sense and Sensibility’ because at the time he “could only communicate in very short sentences” in English, according to Lee.
“The comments I gave the actors were very concise, direct and honest. The cast was competing to see who would get the most rude remark from me,” Lee said.
After ‘Sense And Sensibility’, Lee said, he dared to venture into many other types of movies which gave him the courage to expand his horizons and open his heart.
Filmmaking is about the courage to open ourselves to truth through storytelling, sight, and sound reflected on the silver screen, Lee said, “That’s how I connected with the world. That’s what I love doing.”
Grant, who played a lead role in ‘Sense and Sensibility’, lauded Lee as one of the classiest filmmakers at the ceremony, noting Lee has directed a wide range of films, from his earlier Taiwanese masterpieces like ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’, to ‘The Ice Storm’; ‘Sense and Sensibility’; ‘Brokeback Mountain’; ‘The Hulk’; ‘Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon’; ‘Lust, Caution’; and ‘Life Of Pi’.
“It’s almost impossible to imagine that one man directed them all,” Grant said, joking that Taiwan is well known to be a world leader in cloning science and he is convinced half a dozen cloned Ang Lees live there.
Lee has won several BAFTA awards for his movies ‘Sense And Sensibility’ in 1996; ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ in 2001; and ‘Brokeback Mountain’ in 2006.
He also won Best Director at the Oscars for ‘Brokeback Mountain’ in 2006 and ‘Life Of Pi’ in 2013.
Source: BERNAMA