'Seediq Bale' leads Equine race

"Players from the Rainbow: Seediq Bale"BEIJING -- Taiwan's entry for that foreign-language Oscar, "Players from the Rainbow: Seediq Bale," has brought more nominations than every other movie within the greatest Chinese-language kudofest, the Golden Equine Film Festival.Wei Te-sheng's $24 million pic, probably the most costly film in Taiwan's history, shows the Wushe Incident, a 1930 uprising by aboriginal Seediq players from the Japanese when Taiwan was colonized. It received 11 nominations for that Taiwanese honours, which is locked in Taiwan's Hsinchu City on November. 26.The 2-parter will face stiff competish from over the Strait of Taiwan. Landmass helmer Jiang Wen's B.O. success "Allow the Bullets Fly," which received nine nominations, was China's greatest grossing pic this past year. Zhang Meng's "The Piano inside a Factory" has seven nominations.Other movies arranged within the best feature film category include Ann Hui's "An Easy Existence," which is Hong Kong's foreign-language entry, and Taiwanese helmer Teng Yung-hsing's "Return Ticket."The 4 . 5 hour "Seediq Bale" seemed to be nominated for any Golden Lion Award in the Venice Film Festival this season, where it triggered debate when Taiwan objected to fest coordinators assigning it as being a Chinese co-production and required a correction to mirror the film's provenance because the self-ruled island.An overall total of 161 films will play in the 48th annual honours, that have been founded in 1962 and tend to be considered the very best honours for Chinese-language films in Asia, bringing in interest from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Landmass China. Films from Landmass China were first allowed to participate throughout the the nineteen nineties. Contact the range newsroom at news@variety.com