The final story, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, was written by Hou Hsiao-hsien himself and is an autobiographical account of a young man's infatuation with one of the woman working in a billiards hall in the 1960s. "Their work consisted merely of keeping score and writing it on the small blackboards. But to the boys, they were dream girls," Hou told the Taipei Times.
In the story the young man develops an intense crush on the woman in the billiards hall and cannot forget about her even after he goes off to military service. On leave from his soldiering, he sets out in search of her, passing through a dozen billiard bars from Kaohsiung, to Tainan, Chiayi and Yulin.
"I finally found her, but my time was up and I needed to go back to my base," Hou said.
An award of US$20,000 may not seem like a lot of money for a film nowadays, but the endorsement by the Pusan Promotional Plan will ensure Hou's success in later fund-raising efforts. Previous forum winners include Korea's Lee Chang-dong, whose Oasis won the Jury prize at the Venice Film Festival and China's Liu Bingjian (劉冰鑒), whose Cry Woman went to Cannes this year, as well as Korea's Kim Ki-duk.
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