And the winner is…no one.
That was the message from the China Film Directors’ Guild, which declined to hand out its two top prizes—best picture and best director—for 2013, citing a lack of high-quality contenders.
“What China’s film industry needs now is not to be coddled, but to hold itself to a higher standard,” said director Feng Xiaogang, chairman of the guild’s nine-director awards jury.
China’s box office has been booming in recent years, growing from a mere 950 million yuan ($153 million) in 2002—when China first began allowing modern theater chains—to 21.6 billion yuan last year. But an increase in quality hasn’t followed the increase in revenue, directors and many industry experts say.
“Decades ago, many film directors resolutely gave up their artistic ideals to save the Chinese film market from going bankrupt and devoted themselves to the flood of commercial films,” Mr. Feng said at the awards ceremony Wednesday night in Beijing, which was aired live on state television.
Prominent Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s “A Touch of Sin,” which won best screenplay at last year’s Cannes film festival and has been critically celebrated, wasn’t eligible for consideration for the awards because Mr. Jia’s company couldn’t provide the guild a legal copy of the film on DVD or online. This film didn’t make it to China’s big screens because it hasn’t been approved by censors.
via And the Award for Best Chinese Film Goes to… – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 