Hong Kong Film Award

Do you know that the Hong Kong Film Award (香港電影金像獎, HKFA for short) is a very important award ceremony in the Greater China Region, and one of the greatest recognitions to the movie industry in Asia region? Some people even compare it with American Academy Awards and British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

This annual ceremony inherits the Hong Kong movie industry’s belief of “where there are Ethnic Chinese, there are Hong Kong movies”. The award also witnesses the development and growth of movie industry of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China over the past few decades.

The ceremony was first being held by City Entertainment Magazine (a local film magazine) in 1982. Lots of institutes, like RTHK and Sing Tao News Corporation Limited joined in the following years. While the event suffered financially in the beginning (without even a regular venue to be held), it mostly ended in success. The success of the award was slowly being recognized by the public and the movie sector, and motivated the movie movement in Hong Kong.

Later, the Hong Kong Film Awards Association Limited was formed, managed by representatives from different professional film bodies (like cinematographers, screen writers and editors) in Hong Kong. Then there started to be more rules for the award. Say, in order to be qualified as a Hong Kong film, the film has to meet two of the following three requirements: its director is a Hong Kong resident, at least one of the film companies is registered in Hong Kong and at least six of the production crews are Hong Kong residents.

So, for a qualified movie to compete for the awards, it has to go through two elections. The first election will start at January every year, where five nominees would be chosen for each award categories. The nomination would then be announced in February and the nominees would go for the second election. The nominated movies would be judged by professionals from the sector. And of course, the movie with the highest score (of that category) would be the winner.

Let’s be realistic…and talk about the trophy! There is no fixed design for the award trophy in the first few ceremonies. It’s not until 1991, the 10^th HKFA, that they adopted Antonio Mak’s design: a goddess with shoulder-length hair, wrapped in golden film and holding a pearl overhead. A very fitting embodiment of the achievement those hard working movie-makers pursue for, if you ask me.

With all the important celebrities from the movie industry of Greater China Region attending, HKFA is becoming more famous, and even world-famous.

Yeah, I know. It’s still not as popular as Oscar. But let Hongkongers dream, will you?

It’s the dream and faith that drive the movie makers to create after all.

What’s so bad about having dreams in a world where imagination governs everything?