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Rong Yu, Chief Reporter of Jimu News

The 37th Popular Film Hundred Flowers Awards came to an end on the evening of August 4, and the winners of the new Hundred Flowers Awards received the attention of the entire network. Since the Hundred Flowers Awards are decided by live voting, the final number of votes for each nominee was directly displayed on the big screen on the stage. Some sharp-eyed netizens discovered that when selecting the Best Actor Award that night, 36 of the 101 popular judges chose to give up voting.

On August 6, a reporter from Jimu News interviewed Ms. Yu (pseudonym), one of the public judges of this year's Hundred Flowers Awards and a die-hard movie fan born in the 2000s, and asked her to tell the behind-the-scenes story of the award ceremony that night.

The judges did not expect to "abandon" 36 votes

As the two oldest and most well-known film awards in China, the Golden Rooster Award is known as the "expert award" for its authority and professionalism, while the Hundred Flowers Award is defined as the "audience award" because it focuses on the appreciation of ordinary audiences. Therefore, the judges of this year's Hundred Flowers Awards are not scholars and experts in the film industry, but 101 grassroots audiences who truly love movies and actively support Chinese films. Ms. Yu won the first prize in the provincial film review competition and successfully passed the online interview of the organizing committee, and finally entered the jury of this year's Hundred Flowers Awards.

According to Ms. Yu, she arrived in Chengdu on July 25, and began intensive film watching with other 100 judges the next day: "Whether you have seen these movies before or not, the organizing committee requires us to collectively watch all the nominated films again to ensure that every judge is very familiar with the nominees and nominated works of each award when voting on the evening of August 4."

In Ms. Yu's impression, the average age of the judges of this year's Hundred Flowers Awards is around 35 years old, and most of them are born in the 1990s. The judges are relatively young as a whole. Ms. Yu emphasized to Jimu News that from the time they arrived in Chengdu to the end of the awards ceremony, no one came to "greet" or "hint" the judges during the process. "Each of us judges speaks according to our heart. We like which movies and which roles we like. We all express our opinions during discussions, but they don't affect each other."

Talking about the issue that netizens are most concerned about - why did 36 out of 101 judges choose to give up voting for the Best Actor award? Ms. Yu said that before the award ceremony began, all the judges' mobile phones were taken away, and she only saw the number of votes for this award online after the event ended. "It is true that there are cases of (giving up voting), but awards are inherently subjective, and each judge has his or her own judgment criteria. Everyone should still look at this matter with the right perspective and mentality."

Ms. Yu knew that the Best Actor award at this year's Hundred Flowers Awards had always attracted a lot of attention, but she and other judges did not anticipate the final vote distribution. "The judges did not discuss this matter much after the event, and no one asked each other 'did you vote for this award?'"

Li Xuejian is the first choice of most judges

Regarding the complete list of winners of this year's Hundred Flowers Awards, Ms. Yu said that it was not much different from her own "answer". "The judges will have some exchanges and discuss the award results afterwards. Of course, this result is definitely personal and subjective, and there is no guarantee that every judge's opinion will be adopted. But after all, these 101 judges have passed layers of tests before being selected. They all love Chinese films very much. I believe that everyone is still very fair."

Ms. Yu, who was a judge for the first time at a film festival, did not shy away from admitting that she felt quite a bit of pressure: "Because we 101 judges cannot take into account the opinions of every moviegoer, we know that there will inevitably be some different opinions after the awards are announced, so there is definitely pressure, but we still have to put our responsibilities as judges first."

Ms. Yu also understands netizens' "entanglement" with the number of votes, especially when there are many actors with high "traffic" among the nominees for multiple awards. "But when we are selecting, we will never take the "traffic" factor into consideration. We will always face it with a fair and impartial attitude, and will definitely judge based on the performance of each actor in his or her nominated work."

In this year's Hundred Flowers Awards, Li Xuejian, an older performing artist, won the Best Supporting Actor Award with 76 votes, and was also the nominee with the highest number of votes that night. Ms. Yu also told Jimu News that in several discussions before the awards ceremony, most of the judges highly praised Li Xuejian's performance in "The Legend of the Gods: Chaoge Fengyun", believing that this artist with both virtue and art was the best among all the nominees for the award, so she was not surprised to see Li Xuejian win the award with a high vote.

Ms. Yu also mentioned that Zhao Liying and Gao Ye, who were competing for the Best Supporting Actress Award, were also two actors that the judges had discussed a lot before. "The several female images in the movie "Article 20" are all very outstanding. Both these two supporting actresses and Ma Li, who finally won the Best Actress Award, performed brilliantly in character creation." In the end, Zhao Liying narrowly defeated her "little friend" Gao Ye from the same crew by 2 votes.

After the nomination list for this year's Hundred Flowers Awards was released on July 2, Jia Ling, who was nominated for Best Director and Best Actress for "Hot" at the same time, became the focus of public attention. Many viewers expected her to "smile among the flowers" with this directorial work that took her so much effort, but unfortunately, Jia Ling did not end up standing on the podium.

According to Ms. Yu, Jia Ling's name was mentioned many times during the judges' discussions: "If the subject matter of "Hot and Sour" was changed to other directors, it might not be easy to do. We have all seen Jia Ling's performance in this film. Her personal brilliance is indeed dazzling, but the competition for the Best Director and Best Actress awards this year is really fierce, so the final result may be a pity for Teacher Jia Ling."

(Photo source: Public information from the film company)

(Source: Jimu News)

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