The American Film Institute will give Doctorate of Fine Arts degrees to Rita Moreno and Quentin Tarantino on June 15 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Both will be recognized for their contributions to the art of the moving image during the AFI Conservatory’s commencement ceremony.
The degrees are an annual tradition; last year’s honorees were Angela Lansbury and Lawrence Kasdan. Past recipients include Robert Altman, Maya Angelou, Kathryn Bigelow, Mel Brooks, Anne V. Coates, Clint Eastwood, Roger Ebert, Nora Ephron, James Earl Jones, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Kathleen Kennedy, John Lasseter, Spike Lee, David Lynch, Helen Mirren, Robert Towne, Cicely Tyson, Haskell Wexler and John Williams.
Moreno won an Oscar for 1961’s “West Side Story” and is one of the few performers with an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony). She was recently saluted at the Newport Beach Film Festival and her upcoming projects include a “One Day at a Time” reboot for Netflix. She released the autobiography is “Rita Moreno: A Memoir” in 2011. Moreno was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, the National Medal of Arts in 2010 and the Kennedy Center Honor in 2015.
Tarantino most recently directed “The Hateful Eight” for the Weinstein Company. His 1994 “Pulp Fiction” is listed in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies, a roster of the greatest American movies of all time.
The AFI Conservatory offers a two-year Master of Fine Arts degree in six filmmaking disciplines: Cinematography, directing, editing, producing, production design and screenwriting.
