TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
French film legend Deneuve wins Japan's top art prize
Change Size
French actress Catherine Deneuve at the 67th Berlinale film festival. Deneuve is among the winners of the 30th Praemium Imperiale awards discerned by the Japan Art Association. (AFP/Odd Andersen)
The veteran French actress Catherine Deneuve was awarded one of the world's most lucrative arts prizes Wednesday.
The star of such classics as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Belle de Jour, who made her name in the 1960s playing aloof, alluring beauties, is one of three French people honoured by this year's Praemium Imperiale, which is backed by Japan's royal family.
Deneuve, 74, sparked a worldwide feminist backlash earlier this year by defending men's right to "hit on" women in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
She later tried to row back on an open letter attacking the #MeToo movement she co-signed in the French daily Le Monde, insisting that there was not "anything good about harassment".
Every year five international artists are honoured with the Praemium Imperiale prize worth 15 million yen ($137,000).
Read also: 'Feminist' Deneuve apologizes to sex assault victims
The French Pritzker-winning architect Christian de Portzamparc, 74, was also honoured this year along with the 90-year-old Franco-Belgian surrealist artist Pierre Alechinsky, one of whose paintings now hangs in French President Emmanuel Macron's office.
Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya, 85, famed for her fog sculptures which have misted up galleries across the world, and Italian conductor Ricardo Muti, 77, will also receive prizes from Prince Masahito, the younger brother of Emperor Akihito, at a ceremony in Tokyo on October 23.
A parallel prize for young artists went to Britain's Shakespeare Schools Foundation, which organises the world's largest youth drama festival.
Nearly 150 artists have been awarded the prize down the years including the late Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and US composer Leonard Bernstein.
