Last Saturday, the 2005 Golden Rooster Award Film Festival, the so called "Chinese Oscars," lowered its curtain in the tropical city of Sanya, Hainan Province.

Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan pocketed the Best Leading Actor Award of the 25th Golden Rooster film awards and Jin Yaqin, 84, was surprisingly awarded the best actress.

Xie Tieli and Xie Jin, both the leading figures in the "Third Generation" of Chinese directors, were granted the Lifetime Achievement Awards.

In competition for the other awards, the three films that got the most nominations all reaped satisfactory results.

The war-theme film On Moutain Taihang by Wei Lian, Shen Dong and Chen Jian won the awards for Best Sound Recording, Best Music and Best Feature Films. The international awards winning Hoh Xil Moutain Patrol by Lu Chuan, hailed as the leader of the Sixth Generation, also won the award for Best Feature Film. A dark horse for this year's Golden Rooster awards was You and Me, a small budget film which grabbed the awards for Best Director and Best Leading Actress.

With the lack of superstars present and many popular domestic movies, the Golden Rooster, once the top film awards in China, is now criticized and often downgraded to a "festival" by the press as only representing the voice of the "old guards" of China's film circle. Some winning movies have yet to be released, which is one of the reasons the awards are no longer popular. This year many esteemed filmmakers, like Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Feng Xiaogang, chose to keep their works stay away from it. Organizers are criticized as being more interested in using the "festival" as a profit maker and ignore the fact that Golden Rooster has lost much of its credibility.

(China Daily November 18, 2005)