The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, a non-competitive showcase event, was founded in 1980 with the aim of introducing prominent films from around the world. The film festival is held along with the Golden Horse Awards ceremony annually in an effort to promote cinema as an art form and to enhance intercultural understanding through the works of world cinema.
The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival is closely related to the Golden Horse Awards, as all the nominated films will be screened at the festival. However, they are two separate events.
Each year, about 120 to 150 outstanding films from around the world are introduced to Taiwanese audiences during the two-week eventto stimulatean exchange of ideas and inspire creativity.
Films screened at the festival are divided into nine main categories that include opening and closing films, special screening, Golden Horse Awards nominated films, Chinese-language cinema and panorama.
Over the past two decades, the annual festival has introduced films produced by internationally acclaimed directors such as Pedro Almodóvar of Spain, Nagisa Oshima and Takeshi Kitano of Japan, Abbas Kiarostami of Iran and Krzysztof Kieślowski of Poland.
The festival, which is commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, is organized by the Motion Picture Development Foundation and the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committeeand usually takes place in Taipei in November.
The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival also includes film project promotion and film academy sections as part of its effort to further promote and develop Taiwan's filmmaking industry.
The film project promotion section was founded in 2007, with the aim of passing on the best filmmakers' creative views and concepts as well as promoting future film stars. The film academy section serves as an investment platform for Chinese language film projects to promote cooperation between filmmakers, investors and international film industry professionals.