China rewards controversial actress

Gong Li: Best Actress award at the Golden Roosters, China's Oscars

Leading Chinese actress Gong Li has received a prestigious government award for her latest film.

Gong, 34, scooped the best actress award at the government-run China Golden Rooster Film Festival for her role as a struggling single mother in Piao liang maa maa, or Pretty Mother (English title: Breaking the Silence).

The film was released in China in 1999 and in the US a year later.

In the film, the struggling mother raises a son with learning difficulties without asking for financial help from the government.

The films Gong has been involved in in the past have been attacked for portraying China as backward and feudalistic, such as internationally known movie Raise the Red Lantern.

She is the best known Chinese actress in the West, and most closely associated with Raise the Red Lantern.

The Chinese director of Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang Yimou, pulled a film out of the 1999 Cannes film festival because he felt Western critics preferred Chinese films which are disliked by the Chinese government.

Political

The film was nominated for a best foreign language film Oscar, but won the Bafta award in the same category and was a joint winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice film festival.

The Golden Rooster festival often gives awards to films which are considered to have a valuable political or social message - but the awards are seen in China as the country's equivalent of the Oscars.

At the Golden Rooster film festival the best feature film award was given to the government-produced blockbuster Life and Death Choice, about a Communist Party official who fights corruption.

In August, Chinese authorities ordered officials at all levels to go to the cinema to see the film.

Also honoured as best feature film was Rising in the Wild, a movie about the birth of China's atom bomb.