(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."