The 54th Golden Horse Awards Ceremony took place at National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall Nov. 25 in Taipei City, honoring a selection of the finest Chinese language cinema offerings over the past 12 months.
 
Organized by Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee, the awards attracted a record 576 submissions and a stellar lineup of entertainment industry figures from home and abroad. Big-name presenters included Taiwan’s two-time Oscar-winning director Ang Lee and U.S. actress Jessica Chastain.
 
Lee will take the reins as chairman of the executive board of the committee for the next two years following the end of Sylvia Chang’s term. The acclaimed Taiwan actress and filmmaker was appointed to the position in 2014.
 
Locally made “The Great Buddha+” outperformed on the night, bagging five trophies for best adapted screenplay, cinematography, new director, original score and song. The 104-minute dark comedy follows the exploits of a night security guard and a recyclables collector existing in a voyeuristic netherworld.
 
The film’s writer-director Huang Hsin-yao credited the rich storytelling landscape of Taiwan for the success of the project, and said he looks forward to more local tales reaching the silver screen.
 
According to Huang, the black-and-white movie is his first feature and capitalizes on the 20 years he spent as a documentary-maker. During this time, many opportunities to observe the diverse social conditions in Taiwan came to the fore, he said, adding that these helped make “The Great Buddha+” more relatable for audiences.
 
Another standout was “The bold, The corrupt, and The beautiful.” The 112-minute fiction focusing on the machinations of powerful women in a family business collected three trophies for best feature, leading and supporting actress.
 
Director Yang Ya-che said his motivation for bringing the tangled story to life was to advance society by drawing the curtain back on darker aspects of the world. (CPY-E)