The winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award for the 57th Golden Horse Awards was announced on Aug. 23, with the executive committee unanimously voting to award the prize to director Hou Hsiao-hsien in gratitude for his hard work, achievements, and legacy in cinema.
Since he first entered the film industry in 1973, Hou Hsiao-hsien has worked as a script supervisor, screenwriter, and assistant director, gaining experience before directing his first film in 1980, "Lovable You." From there, he would go on to become one of the iconic figures of Taiwan New Cinema with films like "The Boys from Fengkuei," "A Summer at Grandpa's," "A Time to Live, A Time to Die," and "Dust in the Wind."
His 1989 film "A City of Sadness" was set against the backdrop of the February 28 Incident, challenging a taboo topic of the time. The film won the Golden Lion at the 46th Venice Film Festival, becoming the first Taiwanese film to take the top award at one of the three big international film festivals. "A City of Sadness" was also the recipient of two awards from UNESCO. For it, Hou took the Best Director award at the 26th Golden Horse Awards, while Chen Sung-young won Best Actor.
In 1993, Hou followed up with "The Puppetmaster," winning the Jury Prize at Cannes, and then "Good Men, Good Women," "Goodbye South, Goodbye," "Flowers of Shanghai," "Millennium Mambo," and "Three Times," being selected for Cannes multiple times. In 2015, he was the recipient of the Best Director award at Cannes for "The Assassin."
In May 2020, Hou Hsiao-hsien was the subject of a feature in The New York Times, which described him as "Taiwan's greatest filmmaker." Hou has not only helped take Taiwanese cinema global, he also seeks to provide young people opportunities in the world of Chinese-language film by founding the Golden Horse Film Academy in 2009.
The 57th Golden Horse Awards ceremony will be held at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall on November 21.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee.