After Taipei brouhaha, China orders stars home for event
So the patriotic film (Wolf Warrior 2) was not so patriotic after all?
BEIJING: Beijing has ordered top Chinese talents back to the mainland after a controversy during the Golden Horse Awards in Taipei .
Showbiz luminaries have been ordered to return for the loosely bi-annual Huabiao Awards. The move came just weeks after it directed mainland film executives and talent to snub after-parties and return home as quickly as possible from the in the wake of one winner’s controversial pro-Taiwanese independence acceptance speech.
Director Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), the jury president at this year’s International Film Festival and Awards Macao, which began last Saturday, was summoned back to China for the Huabiao Awards and missed Macau’s opening festivities.
Actress Yao Chen, known for her roles in Chinese blockbuster Monster Hunt and last year’s Journey to the West 2, was also called back to Beijing for the festivities, but managed to return to Macau the very next day.
At a ceremony in Beijing’s Water Cube, an aquatic centre built for the 2008 Olympics, Huabiao honoured some of the most flag-waving films to come out of China in the past two years. That is no surprise for a government-run event, sponsored by the industry regulator in charge of censorship.
Hong Kong-born Dante Lam won best director for his patriotic action hit Operation Red Sea, while Wu Jing, director and star of the equally nationalistic Wolf Warrior 2, was crowned best actor. Jin Chen won best actress for her role in last year’s Hold Your Hands, a drama based on the true story of the village visited by Chinese President Xi Jinping when he first proposed a key national policy of poverty alleviation.
Ten movies were recognised as “outstanding feature films,” including the three mentioned above, Lam’s similar 2016 action flick Operation Mekong, and The Founding of an Army, a work commissioned by the government to celebrate the People’s Liberation Army’s 90th anniversary.
Though Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards ceremony, sometimes known as the “Chinese Oscars,” garners much more attention, some say its future as the top Chinese-language award show may be imperilled after this year’s ceremony became a platform for dissent. Taiwanbased director Fu Yue, winner in the best documentary category
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for Our Youth in Taiwan, took to the stage to express her wish that the self-governed island nation could one day “be treated as a truly independent entity.”
The speech caused concern over whether mainland talent would participate in next year’s event, with some insiders saying that the incident inspired Chinese authorities to go the extra mile in ensuring that this year’s Huabiao was particularly well-attended.
Online, forums were quick to mock the star-studded event, with users asking, “Did they all come to pay their taxes??”
A popular response replied: “It’s also possible they’ve come to discuss new ways of stealing taxes.”
The banter refers to fallout from a tax-evasion scandal that engulfed mega-star Fan Bingbing earlier this year, which sparked an industry-wide tightening of tax regulatory policy that has created massive uncertainties for production companies and talent alike.
Last week, Chinese media reports surfaced saying that even Wu Jing’s Wolf Warrior 2 had been singled out as needing to pay back taxes, leading an upset fan to ask on social media: “So the patriotic film was not so patriotic after all?”