Berlinale Camera Awards Day Lewis, Shochiku and Helene Schwarz

Berlinale Camera Awards 2005

The Berlinale Camera is awarded to film personalities or institutions to which the Berlin International Film Festival feels particularly indebted and wants to express its gratitude and appreciation. The Berlinale Camera was first awarded in 1986. Since 2004, the award has been donated by jeweller Georg Hornemann from Düsseldorf.

This year, the 55th Berlin International Film Festival will honour Shochiku Studios, Japan’s most renowned studio, Helene Schwarz, an outstanding personality in the history of German film, and Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis with Berlinale Cameras for their contributions to the world of cinema.

Shochiku
Shochiku, Japan’s oldest and most important film studio, is celebrating its 110th anniversary this year. By honouring Shochiku, the Berlin International Film Festival is awarding the Berlinale Camera for the first time to an institution. Shochiku has produced a myriad of successful films, including some by Japan’s great directors Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa and Takeshi Kitano. Among the studio’s more recent productions is The Twilight Samurai by Yoji Yamada, which was screened at the 53rd Berlinale. Shochiku is showing Kakushi Ken-Oni no Tsume (The Hidden Blade) by Yoji Yamada in this year’s Competition of the Berlinale. To celebrate the Berlinale Camera award, another classic Shochiku production is being presented in the Berlinale Special: Keisuke Kinoshita’s melancholy screen drama Nijushi no hitomi (Twenty-four Eyes, Japan, 1954).

Shochiku Studios will be awarded the Berlinale Camera on February 16 at 9:30 PM in the Filmpalast. It will be presented by Peter Cowie, the eminent film scholar and author of many noteworthy books on film.

Helene Schwarz
Who is Helene Schwarz? Only the initiated know and yet the German film scene has become unimaginable without her. In 1966 she began working as secretary at the German Film and Television Academy (dffb) and today, at 78, she is a committed student counsellor. She stood by many prominent filmmakers, such as Wolfgang Petersen and Detlef Buck, and for decades has advised and assisted students aspiring to be directors. In his most recent documentary
Wer ist Helene Schwarz?, Rosa von Praunheim dedicates a very personal portrait to this fabulous personality. The film is screening in the Berlinale Special series.
Helene Schwarz will be awarded the Berlinale Camera on February 13 at noon in the Filmpalast. It will be presented to her by director Wolfgang Becker.

Daniel Day-Lewis
Three-time Academy-Award winner for his performances as an actor, Daniel Day-Lewis began convincing critics of his talents in the mid-1980s. In two of these films he played the lead – and these roles could not have been more different: as gay cockney punk, this Irish actor amazed audiences in Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Launderette (1985), and as an upper-class twit, he stood opposite Helena Bonham-Carter in James Ivory’s A Room with a View (1985). After this sensational start, he performed a great number of celebrated roles in a great number of international productions. Daniel Day-Lewis has participated four times in the Competition of the Berlin International Film Festival: under the direction of Jim Sheridan, he starred in The Boxer (1998), and in In the Name of the Father (1994); he also played in Nicholas Hytner’s The Crucible in 1997 and most recently in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, screened at the Berlinale in 2003.
Daniel Day-Lewis will be awarded the Berlinale Camera on February 15 at 6:45 PM in the Zoo Palast.