Berlin, Feb 22 (IANS) Steven Spielberg delivered a blockbuster speech accepting the Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlin Film Festival, reports ‘Variety’.
The filmmaker said that despite directing for six decades, making ‘Duel’ and ‘Jaws’ felt like “last year”. “I know a lot more about moviemaking than I did when I directed my first feature film at 25,” Spielberg said, notes ‘Variety’.
“But the anxieties and the uncertainties and the fears that tormented me as I began shooting ‘Duel’ have stayed vivid for 50 years, as if no time has passed. And luckily for me, the electric joy I feel on the first day of work as a director is as imperishable as my fears, because there’s no place more like home for me than when I’m working on a set,” the auteur added.
“I also feel a little alarmed to be told I’ve lived a lifetime because I’m not finished, I want to keep working. I want to keep learning and discovering and scaring the shit out of myself, and sometimes the shit out of you,” Spielberg said, according to ‘Variety’.
“I gotta get back to some of those earlier scarier movies, but that’s another story for later on. As long as there’s joy in it for me, and as long as my audience can find joy and other human values in my films, I’m reluctant to ever say that’s a wrap.”
Spielberg said he wanted to break the record of Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, who directed his last film at the age of 106, adding that he had genetics on his side as his father Arnold Spielberg lived till 103.
Talking about his autobiographical film, the multiple-Oscar-nominated ‘The Fabelmans’, according to ‘Variety’, Spielberg said it happened because “it was time to look back at my early life at the world I was born into and emerged out of so that I could make my way, make my mistakes and make my movies, and because I made my movies, I get to be in Berlin tonight accepting this overwhelming honour for lifetime achievement.”
Spielberg was introduced onto the stage by U2 frontman Bono, adds ‘Variety’. “Steven Spielberg’s films have touched so many hearts for so many years because each of them tells a human story,” Bono said. “Every story is Steven’s story, but he uses all his skills to make it your story too, our story too, my story too.”
–IANS
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