The Berlinale awards an Honorary Golden Bear to important film personalities. The award honors a particularly outstanding oeuvre or film career and is regularly given to the guest of honour of the Homage. Additional Honorary Golden Bears can be given independently of the Homage section.  

 

The Honorary Golden Bear is awarded during a festive ceremony usually followed by the screening of a film in the Berlinale Special programme.  

 

The Honorary Golden Bear is visually identical to the festival's highest award, the Golden Bear. The Bears inspired the Berlinale logo and were designed by the Berlin sculptor Renée Sintenis (1888-1965). They have been produced by the Noack Foundry in Berlin since the beginnings of the Berlinale. The bear is also the official symbol of the city of Berlin.  

Within the scope of the Homage dedicated to him, the renowned French film composer and winner of multiple Academy Awards Maurice Jarre will receive the Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival. “Film composers often are in the shadows of great directors and acting stars. It’s different with Maurice Jarre; the music of Doctor Zhivago, like much of his work, is world-famous and remains unforgotten in the history of cinema,” comments Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick. 

 

Over the course of his career, Jarre worked on more than 150 international film productions, including works of such well-known directors as John Frankenheimer, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Luchino Visconti and Peter Weir. Jarre`s international breakthrough came in 1962, with his arrangements for David Lean`s desert epos Lawrence of Arabia, which will be shown at Kino International following the Honorary Golden Bear award ceremony on February 12, 2009.