Golden Horse Awards for 2022 go to "Coo-Coo 043" and "Limbo"
Saturday, November 26, 2022 at 3:46PM
NATHANIEL R in Berant Zhu, Chang Chen, Coo-Coo 043, Golden Horse Awards, Hu Jhih-ciang, Incantation, Limbo, Mason Lee, Shuli Huang, Sylvia Chang

by Nathaniel R

Sylvia Chang wins her fourth Golden Horse. img via Golden Horse instagram

Whoops this year's 59th Golden Horse Awards slipped right by us. They were held on November 19th in Taipei. The annual event covers the best in Chinese-language cinema and are juried awards. Director Ann Hui was Jury President this year and actor Chang Chen was also on the jury. The cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing (In the Mood for Love) took over the awards executive committee lead role from Ang Lee. Though the Hong Kong thriller Limbo had led the nominations with 14 and won the most awards, the big winner was a film called Coo-Coo 043. Nominees, photos, winners, and a few comments about the films are after the jump... 

BEST FEATURE

COO-COO 043

 

Sadly only one of the following films is available for US audiences at this juncture though it sometimes takes international titles without US distributors a year or two to make their way to streaming platforms (if they get there). For example two of last years Golden Horse nominees in various categories have recently started streaming in the US: The Falls (which was an Oscar submission) is now on Netflix and Moneyboys (a queer drama) is now on Amazon Prime. 

Last year's Best Actor champ, movie star Chang Chen, returned to hand out Best Actress

Sometimes at the Golden Horse Awards there is Oscar submission overlap but there's not much of it this year apart from Singapore's Oscar submission Ajooma which has a couple of nominations.  Since these films debuted before the end of November they also won't be eligible for Oscar submissions next year either from these Asian countries. One of last year's Golden Horse nominees, though, Goddamn Asura, is submitted to the Oscars this year to represent Taiwan. 

 

BEST DIRECTOR

image vis Golden Horse instagram

Laha Mebow is the first female Taiwanese aboriginal film director.

BEST LEADING ACTRESS

A LIGHT NEVER GOES OUT

A Light Never Goes Out is about a widow who takes up her husband's passion for making neon-signs. The acclaimed Sylvia Chang, who is 69, has been working in Chinese cinema since she was 18. She won her first Golden Horse way back in 1976 (Best Supporting Actress, Bi yun tian)  and has been a favourite ever since. She's been nominated in 7 different categories (Feature, Director, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress, Best Original Song), and won in two of them (Actress, Supporting Actress). This is her third Best Leading Actress win.  She also won for My Grandfather (1981) and Passion (1986... which she also wrote and directed) Her best known films in the US are surely The Red Violin  and Eat Drink Man Woman  but internationally she also received attention for 20 30 40  (2004) which she wrote, directed, and starred in and which was Taiwan's Oscar submission.

Ajoomma, one of the nominees here, is submitted to represent Singapore at the Oscars.

BEST LEADING ACTOR

Wong is best known in the US for his roles in Hong Kong action films like Hard Boiled, Heroic Trio, Infernal Affairs (later remade into The Departed) and the American period film The Painted Veil.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

img via Golden Horse instagram

Kagaw Pilling plays the grandmother in that family drama.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

BAD EDUCATION

Berant Zhu is just 23. Bad Education is about three high school delinquents on the night before their graduation. 

Choreography winner Sheu Fang-yi and Best Supporting Actor nominee Mason Lee serving sexy for the camera

One of the nominees here, Mason Lee (see gif above), was born into cinema. His father is none other than the legendary two-time Oscar winner Ang Lee. You can see Mason Lee as an infant in his father's Oscar nominated film The Wedding Banquet (1994), then again as a child in his father's short Chosen (2001) for BMW (remember those films with Clive Owen as "the driver") and then grown up in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016). He's now 32 years old. Aside from his Chinese language movies he's had a bit part in the Scarlett Johansson movie Lucy, and played "Teddy" in The Hangover Part II. 

BEST NEW PERFORMER

img via wikipedia

Hu Jhih-ciang, who just turned 25 this month, has had a breakthrough year with one television series role, an award-winning performance in a short film, and two movie roles including this one which made him a Golden Horse winner.

BEST NEW DIRECTOR

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

LIMBO

Limbo is in black and white and no matter the country, that tends to be an awards magnet!

BEST ART DIRECTION

BEST MAKEUP AND COSTUME DESIGN

How's this for unusual. A puppetry film won Best Costume Design! 

BEST ACTION CHOREOGRAPHY

image via imdb

Interestingly the winner here is not an action drama but a docudrama about and starring the dancer Sheu Fang-yi who also choreographed. She was a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company in the late 1990s 

BEST FILM EDITING

BEST SOUND EFFECTS

BEST ORIGINAL FILM SCORE

BEST ORIGINAL FILM SONG

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

img via Golden Horse instagram

Will You Look At Me won the Queer Palm - Short Film prize at Cannes this summer and received a special mention in the shorts competition at DOC NYC recently. It details a conversation between the filmmaker Shuli Huang and his mother when he returns home. A graduate of the Beijing Film Academy he became an MFA candidate at NYU in 2019. Will You Look at Me is his second short. He's also served as cinematographer on three feature films. 

 

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT

BEST ANIMATED SHORT

 

The following prizes are decided in different ways or by different sets of voters

AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARD

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

OUTSTANDING TAIWANESE FILMMAKER OF THE YEAR

FIPRESCI PRIZE (for first or second feature)

NETPAC AWARD (honoring new Asian talent)

OBSERVATION MISSIONS FOR ASIAN CINEMA AWARD

Okay, until next year Golden Horse Awards!

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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