Carme Elias received yesterday the Gold Medal from the Film Academy in an intense ceremony in Madrid. An act attended by Julieta Serrano, Marisa Paredes, Mario Gas, Gonzalo Suárez, Carlos Hipólito, Javier Fesser and Elvira Lindo and in which Elias’s colleagues and friends (Barcelona, ​​1951) recalled common stories and read excerpts from his recent book of memories, When it is no longer me (Planet). A ceremony in which the Catalan actress, who made public that she suffered from Alzheimer’s a year ago, gave an emotional speech about her beginnings in the theater and about her learning in her life.
The actress Susi Sánchez, vice president of the Film Academy, was in charge of presenting him with the Gold Medal and assured that “theatre, cinema and television of the last five decades are better because you are in them”. And he went on to say on behalf of the attendees that he would like “you to feel the joy and emotion of this setting where today we present you with the Medal of Honor, added to the immense affection, respect, admiration and sincere gratitude of your colleagues, from those of us who have been lucky enough to work with you and those who have not”.
Mario Gas or Marisa Paredes had spoken before, who recalled the scene they shared in Almodóvar’s La flor de mi secreto: “I will never forget that scene we had, that treacherous friend who confessed all the bad things she had behaved with her great friend, it’s one of the most moving things, really, that one can feel close to a friend.” “You have always been so far and so close, so far and so close. The last time I saw you, no longer working, was at your house, one night I slept with you at your house. I told you: please, I need to be with you , I need to be with you. Thank you, Carme, I love you, “concluded Paredes.
Roberto EnrÃquez, Gerardo Herrero or Amparo Climent also went up to read, Elvira Lindo spoke to her from the position of spectator/admirer and Javier Fesser and Mariano Venancio recalled their work with her in the film Camino, for which he won the Goya. In video, they will send their congratulations from Josep Maria Flotats to Vicky Peña, Silvia Abascal, Isabel Coixet, Jaume Figueras or Àlex Gorina.
And after them, Elias took the stage to admit that she had felt “moved, very grateful for your company, for the words you have said to me. I am full of love and emotion and I thank you. What a beautiful tribute”. And she remembered that she came from “artisans of bread and a perfumery-haberdashery full of smells and ribbons and colors”, and traced a path from the amateur theater to the professional one. “The love for acting grew and grew and thus a vocation was formed that no longer had any back and that has been with us here today,” he remarked, and evoked a poem by the Indian Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore: “If you cry to see the sun tears won’t let you see the stars”. “And of course the sun has disappeared, and sometimes very cruelly, from my life. Although I have always known that at some point the stars would shine. And so it has been,” he acknowledged.
“Each experience lived leaves a trace in our memory, in our body. That trace remains inside, and it has happened more or less, consciously, to enrich my characters. Those that little by little I will forget, since my friend Al wants it that way I have laughed, I have cried, I have suffered, I have enjoyed, I have loved, they have loved me, I have betrayed and I have also been betrayed. I know what happiness is and also what is not happiness. I think I have learned the lessons that my life has sent me. life and I hope to continue active, with the unconditional support of my dear family. I have learned a lot from what I have lived, and although now I am going backwards, unlearning, due to the love that my friend Al, the Alzheimer’s monster, feels for my cells, today , dear friends, I am glad to be here, enjoying your company,” he concluded to thunderous applause from the audience on their feet.
