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Penelope Cruz, nominee for the 1999 Best European Actress Award, with Pedro Almodovar, Cecilia Roth and Agustin Almodovar, producer of 'Todo sobre mi madre'.
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Following on from last year´s Awards, held in London, when Roberto Benigni gambolled onto the stage to pick up the same Award for La vità e bella (Life Is Beautiful) in what turned out to be a rehearsal for his night of glory at the Oscars three months later, this year´s ceremony proved not just that Europe can do the glam thing every bit as effectively as Hollywood: it proved the extent to which European films have gone on to international acclaim while remaining distinctly and defiantly European. And that was something the prewar generation of European directors who crossed the Atlantic - master film-makers like Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock - never quite managed to do.
Ralph Fiennes, winner of the 1999 European Actor Award for 'Sunshine', and Ray Winstone, nominee for 1999 European Actor for 'The War Zone'.
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The same theme of Europe as a partner with the Hollywood powerhouse ran through the rest of the evening, not just in the joint presence, among the major sponsors and patrons, of top European film companies like Le Studio Canal +, Helkon, Kinowelt, Pandora, Pathé and TF1 alongside the Hollywood studios, but also in many of the other top Awards, too.
Mel Smith, co-host of the 1999 European Film Awards, and Award presenter, Brenda Blethyn.
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Perhaps the most sustained applause of the evening greeted the handing out of the European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award to veteran Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who has worked as much in Hollywood as he has in Europe. An almost equally popular prize-winner was David Lynch, who picked up the Screen International Award for a Non-European Film for The Straight Story, a portrayal of the enduring values of Middle America produced by a Frenchman, Alain Sarde, and Le Studio Canal +.
David Lynch, winner of the 1999 Screen International Award for a non-European Film, Ulrich Felsberg, producer of the Buena Vista Social Club, winner of the European Documentary Award 1999-Prix Arte, Cecilia Roth, Pedro Almodovar, Antonio Banderas, and Ennio Morricone, winner of the European Film Academy 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award.
| Indeed, with the exception of Best Short Film (given to rising young Italian director Enrico Verra) and the European Critics´ Award (which went to the Paris-based Georgian art-house director Otar Ioselliani), all of the evening´s Awards went to film-makers who seem to be as much at home in Europe as in America, and who are happy to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the latter without ever losing sight of the former.
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'Notting Hill' nominees: executive producer and screenwriter Richard Curtis, with wife Emma Freud, and producer Duncan Kenworthy.
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Prominent among them were European ‘Discovery´ Tim Roth for The War Game; European Actor of the Year Ralph Fiennes; European Cinematographer of the Year Lajos Koltai; and European Screenwriter of the Year István Szabó (sharing the prize with his collaborator on Sunshine, the American playwright Israel Horovitz).
All in all, Pedro and his ‘American family´ provided a fitting climax, as much to a vintage year for European cinema, as for an Awards process which had seen some 600 different European directors, actors and actresses come into the frame; saw films from a dozen different companies make it through to the final nominations stage (see pages 38-39); and which was broadcast, mainly live, to 24 different countries (including the US).
And so until next year... à bientôt, auf Wiedersehen, ¡hasta la vista!.. And roll on December 2000.
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