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Vivienne Chow

Bruce Lee and Kung Fu Hustle share the limelight in a glittering celebration of 100 years of Chinese film

The Hong Kong Film Awards celebrated a century of Chinese film last night - and its love affair with martial arts - by honouring legendary action hero Bruce Lee and declaring the creative comedy Kung Fu Hustle the year's best film.

While Lee's daughter, Shannon, accepted his award as Star of the Century, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and mainland star Zhang Ziyi won Best Actor and Best Actress respectively for their roles in 2046.

Leung beat off Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow Sing-chi to claim his fifth Best Actor title.

The Wong Kar-wai movie 2046 proved the third star of the night, winning six awards, including Best Art Direction, Best Costume and Makeup Design, Best Cinematography and Best Original Film Score.

If the honouring of the late master was widely anticipated, mainland newcomer Tian Yuan provided the surprise package, winning the Best New Performer award.

Her fellow nominees, including Teresa Cheung Siu-wai for Colour Blossoms and Jaycee Chan Cho-ming for his role in The Twins Effect II, were visibly stunned when the announcement was made.

But the crowd gave a rousing cheer for Tian, who played a lesbian in Butterfly - her first acting role.

As the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards wore on, it became clear that the night belonged to the big names and blockbuster movies - 2046 and Kung Fu Hustle.

Hustle scooped six awards, starting off when veteran actor Yuen Wah was named Best Supporting Actor and finishing with the ultimate prize - Best Film. It also snatched Best Action Choreography, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Design and Best Visual Effects.

Best Supporting Actress went to Bai Ling for her role in Dumplings.

Derek Yee Tung-sing took home two major awards, Best Director and Best Screenplay, for One Nite in Mongkok.

During his acceptance speech, Yee made a plea for script writers to be given better standing in the film industry.

'Many screenwriters have changed jobs, to work for TV stations or as journalists,' he said. 'The industry is pushing the writers to produce very quickly but their treatment is not that good.'

Ahead of the awards, an appeal was made by filmmakers and academics for better treatment of Hong Kong films on the mainland.

Speaking at RTHK's City Forum, Panorama Entertainment chairman Allan Fung Yu-hing said the film industry had not benefited from the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement. 'Not one local production has been able to enter the mainland market under Cepa. Our films still cannot get into the mainland market easily.' Under Cepa, films co-produced with mainland companies are exempted from quotas that limit the import of foreign films to 20 a year. Assistant commissioner (Entertainment) of the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority, Angela Luk Yee-wah, admitted that jointly produced films could enter the mainland market more easily than Hong Kong movies.

The head of the cinema and television department at Baptist University's school of communication, Cheuk Pak-tong, urged the government to seek a better deal  for Hong Kong films. 'The mainland category system is still very strict. The government should help the industry speed up the process of allowing more local productions enter the mainland market.'

Dr Cheuk also said local productions were also losing  markets such as Southeast Asia and Taiwan. He blamed this on the films' shallow plots and lack of creativity. However, Mr Fung said local producers were creative but were restricted by tight budgets.



Martial arts packs biggest awards punch