INTRODUCTORY SPEECH
Good Evening and Welcome, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen.
We would like to escape together with you for a few moments from the world in which we live in order to enter the world of the imagination. To leave our daily habits behind and discover the universe that surrounds us and also to rediscover ourselves inside the limits of our existence. That is what this ceremony of the Time for Peace Film & Music Awards offers you this evening by celebrating cinematographic and musical works in all the variety of their creations.
A comedy and dramas that, through words, images, and melodies can sometimes prompt humor flanked by brutality to enrich the present moment by speaking of great and small things. Works of art that go so far as to open our eyes and mind and show us that sometimes a simple gesture can suffice to create our existence or set it adrift. In the density of cinematographic work, memory can be perpetuated in us for years, decades, sometimes even for a lifetime.
The musical work, too, provides this same vitality. It manages to fill our entire being to the point where, at moments of joy or melancholy, melodies come back to twirl and wander in our mind until they’re dancing on the tip of our lips. We’ll soon discover this, thanks to the presence of the musicians whom I am eager to introduce to you.
This is why these works of cinema and music nurture our life; a kind of spiritual quintessence and perhaps a terrestrial nourishment as well. They can embellish our future by directing our gaze and our hearing toward the path of better understanding of one another, a better understanding of ourselves, a better understanding of the brief instant that we are breathing here on earth. It is Marion – Einbeck – without whom this prize would have never seen the light of day, myself, and our friends, jury committee members and United Nations ambassadors – and we thank you profoundly, your Excellencies – without whom this prize would never have taken its wonderful flight of freedom that it does today, who want to celebrate together with all of you this evening.
To celebrate artists whose cinematographic and musical work asks questions. Human stories that take place in a split second of life, in a fraction of eternity. Sensitive and intelligent views that reveal us to ourselves, that allow us to live better, to better understand the long history that is ours. The history of the human condition.
As one might expect on any journey, we have met people on the way to whom we have spoken of the story and the adventure of the Time for Peace Film & Music Awards that we have been guiding since 1994. Some of them stopped to listen to us. They heard our story and then followed us simply and trustingly. We thank Jaeger-LeCoultre, our companion on the journey, whom I greet here today with a broad smile as I get off the stagecoach where our ideal lies nestled. They have made our road even more pleasant by knowing how to escort and support our initiative in such a positive way. Thanks also to Nippon Airways for having taken the Japanese director Naomi Kawase under its wings so that she could be with us here tonight, and to Aeroflot for making sure that Alexander Sokurov, Galina Vishnevskaya, and Andrej Sigle, too, could fly over to be with us. On the other hand, there is no way that I would forget to mention the presence of the Irish director John Carney and the English director Michael Winterbottom, even if there was no airline-messenger to help bring them to us this evening.
Finally, thank you to all those who have come together here with us to make this evening even more beautiful and successful. The exquisite flavor of the Krug champagnes, the dynamism of our public relations partner Mission Media, and, of course, the presence of the evening’s master, the great chef Jean André Charial, who has come over from the Oustaù de Baumanière, located in his sunny Provence, to join us specifically for this occasion and with Gary Klaner, the chef of the Landmark, prepare the finest of dinners for you.
I wish for us all that this ceremony and dinner concert of the Time for Peace Film & Music Awards will remain inscribed in our memory, as the emotion-filled memory of those who have succeeded in finding each other so as to better recognize one another in the splendor of this hotel whose staff we thank for the kindness and cooperation that they have offered us.
Thank you and enjoy the evening.