Kissing The Ground You Walked On, a film by local director Hong Heng-Fai, was nominated for three awards at the prestigious Golden Horse Awards held in Taiwan in late November. Hong was nominated in the ‘Best New Director’ category, while his partners Charlie Sou and Ellison Lau Chi-keong were nominated in the categories of ‘Best Cinematography’ and ‘Best Sound Effects’ respectively.
The film premiered at the 59th edition of the festival, and explores the relationship between writing and acting. The narrative revolves around Chou, a writer who has been unable to work for several years due to a lack of inspiration. When Chiang, a young actor, becomes his tenant, he is finally able to inspire Chou to write his next novel.
Hong Heng-Fai
This was the first time a Macau director has been nominated in this category, although not his first nomination at the awards. The Taiwanese festival’s executive committee described Hong Heng-fai’s style as a cross between Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Tsai Ming-liang.
The Macau director was competing with four other directors for the award: Kai Ko, director of the Taiwanese film Bad Education; Lau Kok-rui, of the Hong Kong film The Sunny Side of the Street; He Shu-ming, of the Singapore-Korean film Ajooma; and Tseng Ying-ting, of the Taiwanese film The Abandoned. Ultimately, Lau Kok-rui took home the top honours on the night.
Charlie Sou
Previously a theatre actor, Hong started his directing career in 2014, founding his own studio, Day Day Studio. He started by making short films and quickly began winning awards with his first work Before Dawn winning first prize at Rush48 Video Challenge organized by the Macao Cultural Centre. His three subsequent short films, Caged, In Memory of Her and Crash (2016), were all nominated for awards at the Macao International Film and Video Festival. Crash was also nominated in the category of ‘Best Live Action Short Film’ at the 2016 Golden Horse Awards.
Since then, Hong has been fully dedicated to developing and creating Kissing The Ground You Walked On. The director says he was “surprised, but happy” when he heard about his latest nomination, although he confesses that he doubted that the genre of his film would be appreciated by the general public.
Ellison Lau Chi-keong
“This is not the kind of film that mass audiences prefer”, he notes, “but it is very gratifying to be one of the five nominees for the ‘Best New Director ’award, after all, I worked hard for so many years to get recognition,” he says, adding that he was also very excited for the nominations of his co-creators, Charlie and Ellison.
“They are very talented partners who have put in their best efforts to make the film. It is a very big honour for everyone. The Golden Horse Awards have always been a showcase for filmmakers. Being nominated can allow more people to get to know and believe in me, which can help me with future projects. More importantly, it sends an encouraging message to all hard-working filmmakers.”
Commenting on the current state of Macau’s homegrown film industry, Hong believes that the development of the industry depends on many factors and notes that “it is very important for the government to continue to support and invest in the industry and to have the personnel who understand the needs of the industry, allowing policies to be executed in a better way.”
The Golden Horse Awards began in 1962 with the aim of promoting Taiwan’s film production. Today, the scope of the festival has broadened to also reward other Chinese-language films. It is considered one of the most important festivals in Asia, welcoming submissions from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Mainland China, as well as other Chinese-speaking regions.
