The China Film Directors' Guild Award was reinstated Sunday in Beijing with about 200 directors attending, hoping to boost the Chinese film industry and bring recognition to directors' hard work.
The re-launching ceremony announced the award categories and rules. Directors Zheng Dongtian and Tian Zhuangzhuang were appointed chairmen of preliminary jury committee and final jury committee, respectively.
China Film Directors' Guild is an industry guild founded in 1992. The guild debut the awards in 2005, but it has held only two award ceremonies since. The guild said it will be holding the ceremony annually starting from this year.
He Ping, general secretary of the China Film Directors' Guild, announced at the ceremony eight major awards in total: Director of the Year, Film of the Year, Young Director of the Year, Screenwriter of the Year, Actor and Actress of the Year, Hong Kong/Taiwan Director of the Year and the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Zheng added that the award was something of a combination of the Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival. The preliminary jury will review and nominate no more than 30 candidates from hundreds of Chinese films in 2011, and the final jury will decide the winners.
As the most authoritative film festival, the event will select and award the best productions screened domestically or overseas during the period from Dec. 1, 2010, to Dec. 31, 2011. The jury voting process will run for three months. Final results will be unveiled at the award ceremony, which will be held on April 8.
Renowned Chinese film directors Ning Hao, Zhang Yibai, Huang Jianxin, Lu Chuan and Gao Xiaosong attended the launch dinner, while Feng Xiaogang, Chen Kaige and Jia Zhangke sent their taped greetings due to schedule conflicts.
As the new president of the China Film Directors' Guild, Li Shaohong urged film directors to do well in 2012.
"Don't play nice to Jiang Wen, Feng Xiaogang, Zhang Yimou, blockbuster 'Avatar' and dark horse 'Love is Not Blind,'" she joked, adding, "Try to surpass them all, make more films that can gross more than 300 million yuan (US$47.5 million) at box offices, make more films that will truly be loved by the audiences!"
Xie Fei, who represented an older generation of Chinese movie directors, also made encouraging remarks for directors to stand together and fight for their interests.
"Our cinema only screened 100 homemade movies a year, but we produced over 600 movies a year," Xie said. "China Film Directors' Guild should talk to bosses of Chinese theaters and ask them to increase screening time for our own works."