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RICARDO “RICKY” LEE
National Artist for Film and Broadcast Arts (2022)
March 19, 1948
Ricky Lee (aka Ricardo Lee) is a prolific screenwriter for film and television. He is a journalist, playwright, and a prize winning fictionist. Lee emerged as a screenwriter in the late 1970s as part of the generation of filmmakers who ushered the “Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema.” Across four decades, he wrote haunting and historic sequences, scenes, and lines that became the bases for the career defining performances of some of the nations most outstading artists. He showed that a script is an art form that can agitate, philosophize, and entertain. For his stories and screenplays, he received prizes from the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, the Young Critics Circle, the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP), and the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), among others. Lee brought his cinematic sensibilities to the broadcast arts and wrote drama series, and “telesines” for television. He has offered free workshops has trained countless writers who have made a name for themselves. He taught at the University of the Philippines (Diliman and Manila), Ateneo de Manila University, New Era College, University of the East, De La Salle University, and University of Santo Tomas. Among his awards are the Centennial Honors for the Arts from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) in 2000, the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2000 Cinemanila International Film Festival, the 2003 Natatanging Gawad Urian by the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, the 2015 Gawad Plaridel by the University of the Philippines (UP), the 2016 International Film Festival Manhattan (IFFM) Lifetime Achievement Award in Scriptwriting, the 2018 Gawad Dangal ni Balagtas by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF), the 2018 Apolinario Mabini Media Awards by the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), the 2019 MMFF Hall of Fame, the 2020 FAMAS Lifetime Achievement Award for Scriptwriting, and the 2020 Camera Obscura Artistic Excellence Award by the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP). He was also conferred the doctor of humanities, honoris causa, by PUP in 2019.
