2013 50th Year of the Golden Horse Awards

Cathy Teng　/　tr. by Phil Newell

December 2015

中文日本語

For the 50th year of the Golden Horse Awards in 2013, film professionals from Taiwan were joined by colleagues from mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, once again demonstrating that the awards are a platform for interaction for all Chinese-language cinema, no matter where it originates. (photos 1, 3, 7 courtesy of Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee; photo 5 courtesy of iFilm)

2013 was the 50th year of the Golden Horse Awards for Chinese-language cinema, and the event was widely praised as being a spectacular success. The organizers arranged for award-winning actors and actresses from the previous 49 years to be in attendance, including superstars Brigitte Lin (Best Actress, 1990, Red Dust), Maggie Cheung (Best Actress, 2000, In the Mood for Love), Tony Leung (Best Actor, 1994, Chungking Express), and Andy Lau (Best Actor, 2011, A Simple Life). Although the passage of time means that they may not have been the exact same people we idolized on the silver screen when we were teenagers, it was just as thrilling as ever to see them all again.

The Golden Horse Awards were founded in 1962 as the first-ever prizes in the world for Chinese-language cinema. Unlike the Golden Rooster Awards in mainland China (founded in 1981) or the Hong Kong Film Awards (1982), the Golden Horse Awards—known as “the Oscars of the Chinese-speaking world”—have always been inclusive of all Chinese-language films, wherever they are made. Their role as a platform bringing together the entire Chinese movie-making community was borne out again in 2013 with the awarding of Best Film to a Singaporean production, Ilo Ilo, while Malaysian-born Tsai Ming-liang won his second Best Director for Stray Dogs.

Taiwan Panorama has always stayed abreast of the latest developments in the film world in Taiwan. To give a few examples, a 1978 story focused on the winning of a Golden Horse for Best Director by Lee Hsing for He Never Gives Up; in 1983 we reported on Taiwan’s “New Wave” cinema movement; in 1994 we carried an interview with Ang Lee, whose movie The Wedding Banquet had just been nominated for the 1994 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (a first for Taiwan); in 1995 we spread the word about Tsai Ming-liang’s revolutionary dialogue-free film Vive l’Amour; in 2000 we featured a comprehensive review of the lifetime achievements of director Edward Yang; and most recently, in 2015, we provided in-depth coverage of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s newly released film The Assassin. Readers of Taiwan Panorama have continually had a front-row seat for every scene in the exciting development of Taiwan cinema over the past four decades.