Acceptance speech by Tessa Ross, Editor of Argo and winner of the Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema category at the EE Britsh Academy Film Awards in 2013.
TESSA ROSS: Well, thank you. Thank you so much. You will have seen those clips, you will know jolly well that work is by a host of other people, an army of other people, and not me, not least this wonderful man, who I've had the most wonderful time working with.
And I would've loved to have list names and named -- and do some proper thank yous, but in truth the list is so long that I thought you wouldn't mind and you would forgive me if I just said a huge thank you to the extraordinary writers and the visionary directors, the magical technicians and actors, the dogged producers that I have had the huge privilege of working with.
I have learnt something every day and continue to do so, and in truth those wild winding crazy journeys -- I say looking at Danny -- have been the very best bit of the work for me.
I get to take this wonderful thing home and put it on my mantelpiece, but -- and I've sat here jealously looking at teams of people who have come up, because of course I share this with my brilliant team at Film 4, a group of people who are truly exceptional and very much like a second family. They are incredibly committed, they are clever, they are passionate and patient and they're full of ingenuity and huge integrity. They do a huge amount with very little. And really, the reason we can work this way is because of a vision that was built 30 years ago by some brilliant people, David Rose and Jeremy Isaacs , and the vision was very simple and it was this: to take the values of what was then a very new public service channel, Channel 4, and those values were of taking risks, of nurturing talent, of doing things differently, of challenging pre conceptions, and taking those values to the community in this country, the talented people who want to make feature films. And really, that is it, it is as simple as that, and that is the vision we have today. And as the world changes and our business changes at the rate of knots, it seems to me that those values are worth cherishing and working with even more than ever before.
It really works like this: my team and I meet somebody, somebody we have never met, somebody who has a story to tell that we couldn't have possibly imagined, a story only that person could have told, and our job is to support that person, to protect their creativity above all else, to give them time and energy and money. And there is truly no greater privilege than supporting people you admire. So thank you very, very much for this. It's wonderful to be part of building a legacy that is Film 4, but in truth what matters most to me is it should continue to do bigger and braver things and that it should be part, an essential part of our cultural life for very many years, so thank you very much.
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EE British Academy Film Awards in 2013 - Winners Acceptance Speech: Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema
