NEW YORK (AP) — Spike Lee will receive the 20th annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, which carries a reward of $300,000.

The Gish Prize Trust announced the selection Wednesday. Selection committee chairman Darren Walker said Lee was chosen “for his brilliance and unwavering courage in using film to challenge conventional thinking.”

Lee said in an interview that he was well acquainted with Lillian Gish as the actress of “The Birth of a Nation” and “The Night of the Hunter,” but he was unfamiliar with the prize that was established in Gish’s will. She requested that the prize, one of the largest and most prestigious in the arts, be given every year to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”