Vatican Official Recognizes Brazilian Director

(September 5, 2009) Walter Salles, an internationally acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker whose Central do Brasil (1998) won a Golden Globe Award and whose Motorcycle Diaries (2004) won an Academy Award, received the 2009 Bresson Prize on September 4 in Venice. The Bresson Prize, named for the French filmmaker Robert Bresson, is sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. The prize was instituted in 2000 to show the support of the Church for outstanding works of cinema. Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, recognized Walter Salles at the Venice Film Festival. According to Vatican Radio, Archbishop Ravasi brought the voice of the Church to the festival, to promote quality cinema. "I am convinced," the archbishop said, "that there are still steps to be taken, above all on two levels. On one hand, I'd say, the level of quality cinematographic production, which so often apparently seems far from traditional religious horizons, when in reality, there is always a profound search inferred. "On another level, I would say that there is no need to condemn all entertainment cinemas, perhaps above all national and popular, because that as well, if it avoids degenerating, falling into the banal and the superficial, represents for contemporary man what previously happened when a person went to the plaza and watched the city." For his part, Salles said the award is an "encouragement to write and direct my next films -- if there are any -- with the same rigor."