From the Oscars, to European film festivals such as Cannes and Venice, to Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards, film-industry award ceremonies around the world provide great opportunities for fans to take their cameras and get close to stars posing on red carpets. But getting those stars to appear is a big headache for the groups putting on the events.

Film awards galas provide opportunities for industry stars to gather. Golden Horses hostess Dee Hsu ("Little S") wore a traditional evening gown, whereas host Kevin Tsai appeared in an eccentric feathered suit with birdcage headdress. Together, they demonstrated the imaginative flights of fancy taken by people in the film industry.

At a seminar with Bruce Davis of the Motion Picture Academy, director Hou Hsiao-hsien, who is executive director of the 2010 Golden Horse Awards, expressed admiration and envy for the Oscars: Whereas people in Hollywood view the Oscars as an opportunity to come together and show solidarity, when the Golden Horses invite actors or directors with no films in competition, many will say they have no time to spare or moodily refuse, resenting their lack of a nomination.

Who would have guessed, but Davis said he encounters similar difficulties every year. The Academy would like audiences to regard the Oscars as a grippingly competitive process, Davis explained, but the embarrassing truth is that people just want to "look at the stars." [All of Davis's comments are retranslated from the Chinese.] Every year the producers of the Oscars worry that luminaries who aren't up for awards won't come to serve as presenters or sit in the audience, and the organizers often have to go to great lengths to play "friendship cards" to persuade them to attend.

In truth the Oscars have good reason to fear any "dimming of star power," because the Oscars, unlike the Golden Horses and the various European awards, have no film festival associated with them. There are no out-of-competition films to be screened or accompanying sales of international rights. The Oscars are simply an awards ceremony. For the 200 members of the Academy staff, the entire year is aimed at preparing for that one gala event. In 2009, 92% of the Academy's budget came from the broadcast rights to the Oscars award ceremony. Consequently, when the Screenwriter's Guild strike in 2007 threatened to derail the awards, it greatly alarmed the Academy. Fortunately, the two sides were able to reach an agreement and end the strike just two days before the Oscars. Although ratings were down slightly, the gala still went ahead smoothly.

"We're the film industry, but we're at the mercy of television," noted Davis. "Over the last 10 years the American public has gradually been losing interest in live awards ceremonies." Even though broadcast rights are paid out based on a long-standing agreement with the ABC television network, so that ratings have little direct effect on the Academy's operations, if ratings are high, then revenue from commercials will be good. And the Academy also gets a share of that revenue.

It is estimated that the Oscars, broadcast in more than 200 countries around the world, reach an audience of several hundred million. But since 2003, the ratings in the United States have been falling. In 2008, they hit rock bottom, with only 32 million viewers. Much to the Academy's relief, the science-fiction film Avatar, which was loaded with special effects, increased the audience to 42 million, or 13% of Americans, in 2009.

Davis says the proliferation of cable channels has fractured the television audience. Nevertheless, even if audience share has been slipping, the Oscars still attract more viewers than any other non-athletic event-and more than most big sporting events too. Only the National Football League's Superbowl achieves higher ratings. Consequently, television networks are still willing to pay top dollar to broadcast the awards.

At the seminar with Hou Hsiao-hsien, many in the audience were interested in the Oscar's judging system. How does the Academy go about nominating and selecting winners?

Brimming with warmth and highly animated, Davis praised Ang Lee's achievements, urging Taiwan's directors to produce more films that aim both to become box-office hits and win critical favor.

The Academy is made up of more than a dozen "branches" of directors, actors, cinematographers, art directors and so forth. These smaller groups first select five nominees for each prize category within their branch. Those nominations are then sent to all 5500 members of the Academy to vote on. Submitted ballots are given to a firm of accountants, which uses an actuarial formula to calculate the results. The process is quite unlike that used at most film festivals, where typically a dozen or so judges get locked into a conference room to make their cases and trade votes: "I'll vote for your best picture choice, if you vote for my pick for best actor."

"The professional judging system is the feature of the Oscars most worth copying," said Hou, who has also served as chairman of the Taipei Film Festival. In 2010 the Taipei Film Festival gave its best actor award to Bi Xiao-hai, the 11-year-old star of The Fourth Portrait. Hou argued that it was unfair choice, since Bi had never acted before and wasn't really acting. The award for best actor, Hou said, should go to a professional.

But how can the Academy be sure that its members will actually see all the films on the ballot?

"It relies on the honor system." Davis said that he couldn't be sure that all Academy members respect the rules, but he hoped that they wouldn't blindly vote without having seen films.

The process for choosing a best foreign-language film (such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) starts with 33 separate national committees. The restriction that each country can have only one nominee often sparks grumbling, since India produces about 1000 films a year, and China, Japan and France each produce about 400. Nevertheless, only one from each nation can be nominated for best foreign-language picture.

Davis recalled that he once re-sponded to objections from France (which was hosting the World Cup) by noting that Brazil can only send one team to the World Cup, no matter how many thousands of teams can be found throughout its cities and countryside. That got them to shut up.

For film workers around the world, no honor is more desired than an Oscar. Although modestly professing a lack of qualifications to judge Chinese-language films, Davis said that Taiwan has a lot of talent for the size of its film industry. Ang Lee, for instance, is a world-class director, who won foreign-language Oscar nominations for both The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman. Lee has also shot films with themes completely outside of Chinese culture, such as the British literary film Sense and Sensibility. Crouching Tiger created a worldwide craze for martial arts films. Davis described the wire-work employed for the fight scenes in the film as an extraordinary achievement that made a strong impression on the judges. And he said he used to eagerly await the release of Edward Yang's films, before that director's tragic early death.

As for how Taiwan's films could generate more international appeal, Davis said the film industry is often given to dramatic swings up and down, and that its recent improvement in fortunes here is worth celebrating.

But he believes that filmmakers ought to give more thought to themes with "universal appeal." Take Goodbye Dragon Inn, which represented Taiwan at the Oscars in 2003. At first the camera shows an empty theater, and after about two minutes, that theater begins to screen another martial arts film. Because of its English name, many foreign judges thought it would be a film like Crouching Tiger. In fact, it was totally different. And only viewers with some understanding of the history of Taiwan film would appreciate the nuances of its film-within-a-film structure. Tsai Ming-liang has a unique style of filmmaking, said Davis, but his films are hard to understand. Goodbye Dragon Inn wasn't a film that was accessible to mass audiences.

Davis said that Taiwanese directors have an excellent command of filmic language and create beautiful works of art, but unfortunately don't usually choose more traditional-and commercially viable-narrative methods.

Davis, who plans on retiring in 2011, has been executive director of the Academy for 20 years and set the direction of the Oscars for one-third of its history. He regards the establishment of the Academy's Film Archive as his greatest achievement. Amid the excitement of the 2010 Golden Horse Awards, the silver-haired Davis enthusiastically shared from his experiences organizing the Oscars, providing much food for thought about how the -Golden Horses might change course for the better.