Filmmakers Lai Cheng-ying (賴成英) and Chang Chao-tang (張照堂) are to be honored with lifetime achievement awards at the 59th Golden Horse Awards on Nov. 19, the event’s executive committee said on Thursday last week.
Lai said that he was surprised and delighted to be named a recipient, adding that he would share the honor with those he had worked with in his decades-long career.
Chang said that he would use his achievement as the first documentary filmmaker to receive the award to appeal to movie lovers’ interest in documentaries.
Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Film Institute via CNA
The two filmmakers have five Golden Horse Awards between them.
Lai, 92, made his initial foray into filmmaking as one of the first apprentices at Agriculture Education Motion Pictures, the predecessor to Central Motion Picture Corp, where he became one of the pioneers to help Taiwan’s movie industry transition to color after learning techniques in Japan.
Lai was a common collaborator with late director Lee Hsing (李行) — often hailed as the godfather of Taiwanese cinema.
For his work shooting in color, he won three Golden Horse Awards for Best Cinematography, Color, winning the first at the 3rd Golden Horse Awards in 1965 for Beautiful Duckling (養鴨人家), a second at the eighth awards ceremony in 1970 for Stardust (群星會) and a third at the 10th in 1972 for Execution in Autumn (秋決).
Lai branched out into directing, recruiting the likes of Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien (侯孝賢) as his screenwriter and assistant director.
Chang, 78, transitioned from film cinematography to documentary filmmaking and videography education, influencing the likes of Australian-born Hong Kong cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and Taiwanese directors Chung Mong-hong (鍾孟宏) and Huang Hsin-yao (黃信堯).
Aside from making projects such as The Homecoming Pilgrimage of Dajia Mazu (大甲媽祖回娘家) and Face in Motion (剎那間的容顏), which have been hailed as two of Taiwan’s best documentaries, Chang’s Ancient House — Chinese Traditional Architecture (古厝) won him Best Documentary and Best Cinematography for a Documentary at the 17th Golden Horse Awards in 1980.
To help achieve his goal of cultivating more Taiwanese documentary talent, Chang became one of the founders of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival in 1998.
The popularity of the festival resulted in it becoming an annual event from May 2016.
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