Directors prepare to battle at Golden Horse

It's time again for the annual showdown tomorrow night at the 37th Golden Horse Awards (GHA, 金馬獎), the Oscars of the Chinese speaking world, with the two giants of Chinese-language film, Wong Kar-wai (王家衛) and Ang Lee (李安), facing off over a slew of nominations.

For Taiwan though, this year's lineup of participating films is the cause of some embarrassment, since only about a third of the 44 films taking part this year are from Taiwan. Films from Hong Kong account for much of the remainder. This is a symptom of Taiwan's low annual production of films -- less than 20 productions per year.

But despite indications that the slump in Taiwan's movie industry is far from over, the coming together of such major figures as Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Tony Leung (梁朝偉), Maggie Cheung (張曼玉) and Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) cannot but generate excitement in local film circles. It may not guarantee a boost to the Chinese-language film market, but at least it boosts confidence and hope.

In addition to its box office success, Ang Lee's exhilarating martial art film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍), nominated in 13 categories, has the largest number of nominations in this year's awards. It is closely followed by Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (花樣年華), which has nine nominations. In the Mood won three major awards at Cannes this May and is clearly a strong contender.

"A specialty of this year's Golden Horse is the abundance of excellent films," said the award's jury chairperson Lo Hui-min (羅慧明), when nominations were released last month.

According to film critic Wen Tien-hsiang (聞天祥), the most spectacular Chinese-language films this year are In the Mood For Love, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Edward Yang's (楊德昌) A One and A Two (一一), the latter winning the best director prize at Cannes 2000. "Because Yang did not join this year's Golden Horse, this year's awards are basically a competition between Crouching Tiger and In the Mood. Any film aside from the two winning the best picture can be seen as a dark horse," Wen said.

However, quite a few dark horses have been crowned with gold in past Golden Horse ceremonies.

Mixed beginnings

In the 1960s, the award was generally given to patriotic propaganda films. The word "golden horse" is a homophone for the abbreviation for Kinmen and Matzu, Taiwan's frontline islands opposite China. It was not until James Soong (宋楚瑜) became head of the Government Information Office in the late 1970s that the format of the GHA was changed to imitate that of the Oscars.

The GHA is a combination of the Oscar and European film awards, said Wen. "On one hand, it has the abundant technical awards of the Oscars. On the other, it has adopted the jury system used at the Cannes or Berlin Film Festivals," he said.

As its ideological color faded over time, the GHA has gradually become an award to encourage and applaud achievement in Chinese-language films from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, said Lee Hsing (李行), chairman of Golden Horse Executive Committee.

To a certain extent, the GHA remains the most anticipated cinematic award in the global Chinese film market. "First, it is the oldest. The Hong Kong Film Awards (香港電影金像獎) did not begin until 1980, and it only accepts films produced in Hong Kong," Wen said. Moreover, the GHA's Chinese counterpart, the Golden Rooster Award (中國電影金雞獎), still has too much ideological bias in its selection process, Wen said.