Golden Rooster Awards go low-key

The 22nd China Golden Rooster & Hundred Flowers Film Festival kicked off on Wednesday night in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Compared to previous festivals, the opening ceremony this year was simplified, taking only 25 minutes.

The event, hosted by Tang Liangzhi, the mayor of Wuhan, started with a few short speeches, then moved on to the premiere of Bai Niao Chao Feng ("Birds paying homage to the phoenix"), which bagged four nominations for the Golden Rooster Awards of the festival. The film is named after a famous suona horn song, and it tells a story of two generations of suona horn players.

The director Wu Tianming and the main cast stepped onto the stage, paying their respects to the audience, but without any speeches.

The Golden Rooster Awards this year included 18 categories. Chinese director Feng Xiaogang's Back to 1942 topped the nomination list, as it was selected as a finalist in eight different categories, followed by Feng Shui, So Young and American Dreams in China. The final winners will be announced on Saturday.

Besides special guests, reporters and the festival's own staff, the representatives from various fields are invited to the closing ceremony.

In the past few years, the tickets for the closing ceremony could be resold for several thousand yuan. But the tickets this year were released to the public free of charge.

The film festival this year has cancelled four previously organized wine parties and some galas as a response to the government's admonishments for frugality.

Kang Jianmin, the deputy director of the festival committee, told the Beijing Times that the toned-down approach would help the film festival to return to its core focus - movies.

The budget of the opening ceremony dropped from 9 million yuan ($1.47 million) to 300,000 yuan, and the final cost might dip about 40 percent from previous years, Kang said.