Ang Lee to receive Directors Guild lifetime achievement award
10 December 2024, 18:24
The DGA, which considers the award its highest honour, has given it to 36 filmmakers over its 88-year history.
Filmmaker Ang Lee, who directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain, will receive the Directors Guild of America’s lifetime achievement award.
The guild announced on Tuesday that Lee, 70, will be given the award at the 77th DGA Awards on February 8.
The DGA, which considers the award its highest honour, has given it to 36 filmmakers over its 88-year history. The last director to receive it was Spike Lee in 2022.
“Ang Lee is truly a master filmmaker,” said Lesli Linka Glatter, DGA president, in a statement.
“For over 30 years, he has directed a dynamic body of work that boldly cuts across genres – from period drama to comedy, adventure to western, superhero to martial arts – always fearlessly taking on new challenges, never repeating himself, and consistently achieving cinematic excellence.”
“I am honoured to be recognised in such an incredible way by my beloved guild,” Lee said.
“To be given the DGA lifetime achievement award is a momentous achievement for me personally, and an opportunity to reflect on what my work has meant to this amazing community of my fellow filmmakers.”
Lee’s films also include 1995’s Sense and Sensibility, 1997’s The Ice Storm, 2003’s Hulk and 2012’s Life of Pi.
The Taiwan-born filmmaker has twice won the Oscar for best director, for Brokeback Mountain and for Life of Pi.
His last film was 2019’s Gemini Man, a Will Smith action film shot at 120 frames per second.
At a recent ceremony in Tokyo where Lee received the Praemium Imperiale Award, he lamented that he has not made a movie recently.
“I haven’t made a movie for six years, and I don’t know where to start again,” Lee said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“Cinema needs a drastic change. If we continue down the same path, it will be a dead end. We need something that will make audiences marvel again.”
