Academy Award organizers said Tuesday they have invited 83 countries to submit movies for foreign-language film nominations for the movie industry's top honors, including first-timers Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.

 

For filmmakers outside the United States, an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can give their work global recognition and help boost ticket sales, making nominations tremendously important.

 

The Beverly Hills-based academy established a foreign-language film category in 1956. Since then 102 countries have participated in the nomination process.

 

The first Oscar for a foreign film went to the Italian La Strada, directed by Federico Fellini. The winner of this year's Oscar was South Africa's Tsotsi, about a young gang member in a tough Johannesburg township. The film is currently playing in Shenzhen theaters.

 

Last month, the academy changed the rules for the nomination process to broaden the group of its members who vote on the films and to include foreign films not in the native language of the filmmaker's country.

 

In China, the competition for nomination this year is expected to be between The Banquet directed by Feng Xiaogang and The City of Golden Armor by Zhang Yimou.

 

(Shenzhen Daily July 13, 2006)