Filmmakers Lai Cheng-ying (???) and Chang Chao-tang (???) will be honored with lifetime achievement awards at the 59th Golden Horse Awards (GHA) on Nov. 19, the award’s Executive Committee announced on Thursday.
On being named as a recipient, Lai said he was both surprised and delighted, adding that he would like to share the honor with those he had worked with in his decades-long career.
Chang, on the other hand, said that he would like to use his achievement as the first documentary filmmaker to receive the award to appeal to movie lovers’ interest in documentaries.
Both filmmakers are masters of their craft with a total of five Golden Horse Awards combined.
Lai, 92, made his initial foray into filmmaking as one of the first apprentices at Agriculture Education Motion Pictures, the predecessor to the Central Motion Picture Corporation, where he became one of the pioneers in helping Taiwan’s movie industry transition into shooting in color after being sent to Japan to learn color filming techniques.
Lai often used his cinematography skills in movies made by late movie director Lee Hsing (??), who was often hailed as the godfather of Taiwanese cinema.
For his work shooting in color, he won three Golden Horse Awards for Best Cinematography – Color, winning the first at the 3rd GHA in 1965 for “Beautiful Duckling (????),” then a second at the 8th GHA in 1970 for “Stardust (???),” and finally, at the 10th GHA in 1972 for “Execution in Autumn (??).”
Lai eventually branched out into directing, recruiting the likes of now-famous Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien (???) as his screenwriter and assistant director.
Meanwhile, Chang, 78, transitioned from film cinematography to documentary filmmaking and videography education, influencing the likes of Australian-born Hong Kong cinematographer Christopher Doyle and Taiwanese directors Chung Mong-hong (???) and Huang Hsin-yao (???).
Aside from making projects such as “The Homecoming Pilgrimage of Dajia Mazu (???????)” and “Face in Motion (??????),” which have been hailed as two of Taiwan’s best documentaries, Chang’s “Ancient House – Chinese Traditional Architecture (??)” also won him Best Documentary and Best Cinematography for Documentary at the 17th GHA in 1980.
To further his goal of cultivating more Taiwanese documentary talent, Chang became one of the founders of the biennial Taiwan International Documentary Festival in 1998.
The popularity of the festival eventually resulted in it becoming an annual event held in May from 2016.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel