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Paul Fonoroff

FOR a few days last week, Guangzhou was transformed into a combination of Cannes and Hollywood - but with Chinese Socialist characteristics - for the annual Golden Rooster-Hundred Flowers Film Festival.

  The Golden Roosters are the official prizes, sponsored by the official China Film Association.

  The 16th Annual Hundred Flowers awards are determined by ballots mailed in from readers of China's largest circulation movie magazine, Dazhong Dianying or Popular Film.

  I set about doing some background research before accompanying an ATV television crew to host the Hong Kong broadcast of the awards ceremony.

  In the yellowing pages of 30-year-old issues of Popular Film I discovered a discrepancy that has never been discussed in the Chinese press: the mystery of the 1964 awards.

  The first Hundred Flowers prizes, named after Chairman Mao Zedong's dictate to ''let one hundred flowers bloom'' in the theatrical arts, were bestowed in 1962, and the second in 1963; but the third ''annual'' awards didn't take place until 1980.

  The 17-year gap between the second and third ceremonies is officially attributed to sabotage by the Gang of Four and the Cultural Revolution. But the Cultural Revolution didn't start until 1966, three years after the 2nd Hundred Flowers.

   Popular Film indicates that a 3rd Hundred Flowers was initiated in 1964.

  Hundred Flowers ballots were published in the magazine's February 1964 edition. An item in the June issue notes that ''the voting activities have been completed, and we are now in the process of calculating the results and preparing for the awards ceremony''.

 The July 1964 issue included photographs of balloting activities throughout China under the headline ''Readers deeply love the Hundred Flowers Awards''.

 There were also two pages of letters to the editor in which movie buffs discussed their choices for Best Picture.

  Among the films enthusiastically praised was Red Sun, directed by Tang Xiaodan, whose career dated back to Shanghai's silent film era.

  These letters were the final word on the subject. After July, the 1964 Hundred Flowers was never again mentioned in the pages of Popular Film.

  In the wake of Mao's mid-August 1964 attack on revisionist trends in the film industry, the magazine suspended publication for two months.

  More significant, in terms of the cessation of the Hundred Flowers Awards, was an attack given prominent coverage in the pages of the theoretical film journal, Dianying Yishu or Cinema Art. In its December issue, 23 pages were devoted to censuring a 1962article by eminent author Qu Baiyin.

  Qu's essay questioned the strait-jacketing of creativity in Chinese socialist cinema since 1949, and praised the accomplishments of left-wing film-makers in 1930s Shanghai.

  The latter was a particular sore point with Chairman Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, who never forgave these very movie-makers for her less-than-illustrious career as an actress in pre-World War II Shanghai.

  Red Sun, one of the year's top contenders, was scripted by Qu.

  Is it possible that the movie won some of the top prizes, perhaps a Best Director for Tang - one of those Shanghai veterans so detested by Jiang Qing; or that Qu won for Best Screenplay?   I tried to get some answers in Guangzhou last week.

     Popular Film's representative at this year's festivities was Yeung Kwok-wan, deputy director of the magazine's editorial staff. ''From what I understand, all the ballots were received and a final tabulation was completed, but it was never made public,'' she said.

   She suggested that I speak with Tsui Pok-tsuen, a member of the China Film Association who was editor of Popular Film before the Cultural Revolution.

  Mr Tsui was both surprised and amused by my questions.

  ''Yes, the balloting was completed but before a final tabulation could be made, word came from above that the Hundred Flowers Awards was suspended.

 ''During the Cultural Revolutions, Popular Film ceased publication and our offices were moved from Shanghai to Beijing. In the process, the original ballots were scattered and lost.''   The full story may never emerge. The cessation of the 1964 Hundred Flowers Awards was a telling prelude to the Cultural Revolution, an early inkling of the havoc that was to bring a total halt to the Chinese film industry just a couple of years later.



Film awards a ghost of China's lost past