Taipei Golden Horse film awards and Singapore cinema: Prestige, privilege and disarticulation

Abstract

Drawing from the idea of national revival, which is closely associated with the term ‘new wave’, this article examines the implications of how winning international film awards, with a focus on how the Taipei Golden Horse Awards (GHA) is variously understood by Singapore filmmakers. If film festivals and awards are crucial to constituting the ‘Singapore new wave’, how does GHA perceivably shape filmmaking and the way filmmakers understand issues of identity, language, prestige and cultural sensibilities? Based on interviews with ten Singapore directors and a producer-film festival director, media reports, film reviews and social media posts, I demonstrate that the supposed prestige of GHA is fraught with conflicting understandings of ‘Chineseness’, impartiality, inclusivity and credibility. For a sovereign country with a high ethnic Chinese population like Singapore which claims a national identity that is multilingual and multi-ethnic, at stake are the problematics of Chinese geopolitics and the linguistic-cultural practices of exclusion when it comes to GHA nominations and wins.