Golden Horse Awards: Chinese documentary wins competitive award

Taipei, Nov. 25 (CNA) Documentary "YOUTH (Spring)" (青春 (春)) made by Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing (王兵) won the best documentary award at the Golden Horse Awards ceremony on Saturday evening.

"On behalf of the director and a group of producers, I deeply thank the Golden Horse Awards," the documentary's producer Vincent Wang (王琮) said in his acceptance speech.

"YOUTH (Spring)" is the first of a proposed trilogy exploring the topic of "youth," Wang said, adding that the director plans to make two more films on the subject.

According to the jury, Wang, with "disciplined execution," has "faithfully documented" how young people learned about love and separation in the midst of trying to make a living and tackling various daily pressures.

The documentary, which took Wang five years to complete, seeks to capture the lives of a group of young factory workers, many of them under the age of 20, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang.

Wang, a prominent figure in China's independent movie scene, gained international recognition in 2003 for "Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks"(鐵西區), a nine-hour documentary about industrial communities in China that won the Grand Prize at the Marseilles Festival of Documentary Film in France.

The category this year has been seen by some movie critics and enthusiasts as unusually competitive because four of the five nominated documentaries were made by award-winning directors.

They include "Elegies" (詩) by three-time Golden Horse Best Director winner Ann Hui (許鞍華) from Hong Kong, and "Where" (何處) by Malaysian auteur and prominent art-house figure in Taiwanese cinema Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮).

"Free Beats: The Musical Journey of CHEN Ming Chang" (撼山河 撼向世界) by Taiwanese director Lin Cheng-sheng (林正盛) and "The Clinic" (診所) by Myanmarese-born Taiwanese filmmaker Midi Z (趙德胤) were also nominated.

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