At the Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) on Saturday night, Taiwanese cinema seemed ready to celebrate an early victory as local productions dominated in almost all the categories that had Taiwanese nominees. Cape No. 7 (海角七號) was undoubtedly leading the way.
The film ended up taking home top honors in five categories, including best supporting actor and outstanding Taiwanese film of the year.
But things took an unexpected turn 10 minutes before the ceremony ended, with Hong Kong’s Peter Ho-Sun Chan (陳可辛) and his big-budget costume drama The Warlords (投名狀) walking away with awards for best feature film and best director.
BASICS
The Taipei Times caught a few jury members and festival chairwoman Peggy Chiao (焦雄屏) at the after-party and asked them their views on this year’s Golden Horse.
“I think before we can talk about the award result, we should first have the jury system under review,” said Wang Keng-yu (王耿瑜), a film producer, film and music festival curator.
The judging process is divided into two stages: the preliminary, with 20 judges, and the final, with seven. In the first stage, discussions and meetings were broken into groups because each member of the jury is responsible for the nominations in several award categories, rather than all the jurors working together.
“As a result, the nomination list is not a general agreement among all jury members but a consensus within the groups,” Wang sad. “We turned in our grades and read the nomination list on the newspaper.”
“The final scores are reached combining the grades we made and those made by the jury in the second stage. None of the jury members knew the results before they were announced,” Wang said. “It’s a consensus all right. But is it a fair and credible consensus? There is still room for improvement.”
Wu Mi-sen (吳米森), a film director, said that Taiwanese movies had done well.
“As a jury member, I felt no pressure to be patriotic this year. I cast each vote with confidence and assurance, knowing that I wasn’t rooting for the film just because it was made in Taiwan.”
“Personally, I think Kelly Lin (林熙蕾) and Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) have made great progress — from pretty-faced pop-idols to serious actors. Their works haven’t been recognized partially because people still see them as idols rather than actors,” he said.
Chang Chang-yen (張昌彥), a veteran film critic and scholar, said: “As a juror in the first stage, I am not satisfied with the results. Many Taiwanese movies were left out.”
“As far as the jury system goes, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Unlike the Oscars, which have 3,000 film professionals at its disposal, there are only 30 of us, so that each member is assigned to a certain number of award categories,” he said. “It causes problems when, say, a cinematographer needs to be the judge for editing or a specialized field he or she is not familiar with. It can easily lead to a situation where the one who knows the field leads the discussion and forms a consensus.”
BATTLE
Chiao said that the competition in the best feature film and best director categories was a battle between film industries.
“Behind the productions from Hong Kong and China are colossal amounts of money, rich resources and mega stars. Taiwanese movies are comparatively low-budget and human drama-driven. We may yet grow stronger in the industry contest. But this year’s Taiwanese films definitely surpassed others in content and artistry,” Chiao said.
In related news, some Internet users in Taiwan said they were irritated by Chan’s remark that Cape No. 7 was the “hope for Chinese movie industry.”
“I don’t have much to say about the results, but I have something to say to director Peter Chan,” Internet user “Asmmilk” posted. “Sorry, but Cape No. 7 is not a Chinese movie.”
However, an Internet user nicknamed “Perry680606” defended Chan, saying in a posting that Chan probably didn’t do it on purpose.
“He has long been making movies in China, so it would be reasonable that he just used the phrase ‘Chinese movie’ without even thinking about it,” he wrote..
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY LOA IOK-SIN
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS