I watched a video yesterday of Akira Kurosawa receiving a special Oscar at the 1990 Academy Awards. It was presented by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who were introduced by Jack Valenti as the "new kids on the block". That struck me as a little disingenuous, given that they'd already been working in Hollywood for a couple of decades at that point and were hardly "kids". But in any case, it was good to see the two filmmakers pay tribute to the master who'd had such a profound influence on both of them.
I found Kurosawa's speech especially moving. He said that he did not feel that he had earned this Oscar yet, because he feels he does not yet understand cinema, and has not yet discovered the essence of cinema. But now that he has the Oscar, he promises that he will keep working at it and do his best to earn the award. It's a good reminder that even someone as accomplished as Kurosawa, undoubtedly one of the very finest film artists the medium has ever produced, continued to grapple with these questions about the art of cinema and pushing himself to reach new heights.
You can watch his full speech on YouTube:
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