The race is on for Golden Horse tickets

Organizers of the Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎), one of the most important film events that recognize outstanding Chinese-language films, made public the nomination list this week with new works from heavyweight directors competing for honors.

Tsai Ming-liang's (蔡明亮) The Wayward Cloud (天邊一朵雲), Hou Hsiao-hsien's (侯孝賢) Three Times (最好的時光), Johnnie To's (杜琪峰) Election (黑社會) and Stephen Chou's (周星馳) Kung Fu Hustle (功夫) are among the nominees for Best Feature Film, while all of the films' creators are nominated for this year's Best Director award.

However, to some people's dismay, the box office hits The Myth (神話), Seven Swords (七劍) and Stanley Kwan's (關錦鵬) Song of Everlasting Sorrow (長恨歌) were left off the list.

The awards ceremony is scheduled to be held in Keelung City (基隆市) on Nov. 13.

Meanwhile, the 27th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (台北金馬國際影展) will soon get underway and is sure to dazzle local film buffs with hundreds of feature films and an array of shorts and animation.

The 14-day festival is slated to begin on Nov. 4 in Taipei at the Warner Village Cinema complex in Xinyi district, while a smaller version of the festival will also take place in Keelung.

To reach a wider audience and to give more people the opportunity to enjoy non-Hollywood movies, the festival will go on tour, stopping off at Kaohsiung, Zhanghua (彰化), Taichung, Hsinchu and Hualien.

As always, this year's festival is divided into numerous sections including `Master Class' that introduces new works from movie making masters, `A Celebration of Cinema' featuring recent flicks that have met with acclaim on the international festival circle, "Global Vision" that showcases works from Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and North America and a section on shorts and animation.

Several new sections have been added to the festival's roster.

The "Hungarian New Wave" section focuses on the young generation of Hungarian filmmakers who have come to the attention of international art house movie circles in recent years, while "All That Cinema" traces the lives of important figures in cinema such as Francois Truffaut and James Dean. The "Digital (R)evolution in Its 1st Decade" will screen an array of experimental shorts.

This year's "Filmmakers in Focus" section pays tribute to veteran director Dusan Hanak from Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) and female Belgian director Chantal Akerman. Banned by the government until 1989, Hanak's documentary and feature films focus on the lives of ordinary people in harsh surroundings. Hailed as a masterpiece of world cinema, Pictures of the Old World is a 70-minute documentary that creates a poetic portrait of rural existence through still photography, archive footage, interviews and live action.

Akerman is a versatile artist who crosses freely between the boundaries of different art genres. Focusing on female existence and the human condition in general, her works are emotionally charged and aesthetically avant-garde.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, considered to be one of Akerman's most important works, is a three-hour long examination of the life of a Belgian housewife/prostitute. Taking the appearance of a real-time documentary, the film deeply probes the surface of humdrum daily life to expose the woman's inner self.

Festival curator Huang Cui-hua(黃翠華), has introduced two new sections with the aim of fostering dialogue between local film industries and the global movie making machine.