The Philadelphia-based National Constitution Center has announced that filmmaker and humanitarian Steven Spielberg has been awarded the center's 2009 Liberty Medal.

In films such as The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List, Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, and his work on the HBO series Band of Brothers, Spielberg often has depicted triumphant individuals who struggle against tyranny and injustice to attain freedom. After filming Schindler's List in 1994, Spielberg established what became the USC Shoah Foundation Institute to chronicle and preserve video and oral histories of survivors of and witnesses to the Holocaust. The institute, which already houses a large store of interviews, has begun collecting testimony from the survivors of other genocides, including the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Past Liberty Medal winners include Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Hamid Karzai, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Colin Powell, Sandra Day O'Connor, Doctors Without Borders and CNN International. Former President Clinton will present the award to Spielberg during an October ceremony.

"It will be a great pleasure for me to receive this award," said Spielberg. "I am thrilled to be honored by my dear friend, President Clinton, and to be recognized by an organization unprecedented in its devotion to the most relevant and significant document in our nation's history. It's truly humbling to be added to the distinguished list of past recipients, a group of men and women whom I admire deeply for their commitment to educating the world about the importance of freedom and the blessings of liberty."