298
PUBLICATIONS, BROADCASTING AND FILMS
held in Tokyo. It was at this Festival that Shaw Brothers won a total of five awards. They also won nine awards at the Taipei Golden Horse Festival and their film, Empress Wu was exhibited at the Cannes Festival. Another major Shaw success was Madame White Snake which attracted record audiences in Hong Kong for a Chinese film. The Motion Picture and General Investment Com- pany Ltd, won a Taipei award for the best dramatic film with their Father Takes a Bride. Dong Cheng received the best actor award and the same studio won the best film script award.
The acceptance by western audiences of Chinese films has now encouraged Hong Kong studios to look upon Europe as a possible market for some of their products.
The use of Hong Kong as a suitable locale for shooting both full-length feature films, television documentaries and promotional films was again demonstrated during the year when film production units visited the Colony in large numbers. The 1963 visitors in- cluded film-makers from America, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. One major production involving leading international actors, was the shooting by Columbia Films of Joseph Conrad's well-known novel of the Far East, Lord Jim.
Cinema-going is an extremely popular pastime in Hong Kong and there are now 79 cinemas with 84,461 seats. Hong Kong Island has 28 cinemas (30,840 seats), Kowloon 34 (40,850) and the New Territories 17 (12,771). The majority of the cinemas have air- conditioning and 'wide screens.
It is one of the tasks of the Information Services Department to carry out those provisions of the Colony's Places of Public Entertainment Ordinance which require that all films must be viewed by a Panel of Film Censors before public exhibition. The film censorship section operates two theatres, one for 16 mm and one for 35 mm films, within the department and inspected 2,392 films during the year.
GOVERNMENT INFORMATION SERVICES
The Government Information Services are concerned with every one of the forms of communication dealt with in this chapter. The department's closest links are with the press and many of the