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Chinese film director up for award after harming environment
2006-11-01
Chinese director Chen Kaige has been bizarrely nominated for an environmental award because he damaged a pristine Himalayan lakeside area during the shooting of a film. Producers of his film, "The Promise," were fined 90,000 yuan (11,250 dollars) for destroying vegetation near Bigu Lake in Shangri-la county in southwest China's Yunnan province, the Xinhua news agency said Wednesday. But he has been nominated for the "Green Chinese" award, which picks five to 10 Chinese who have made "great contributions" to environmental protection, to highlight the issue through a negative example, Xinhua said. "Sometimes, a negative example can serve as a warning," Xinhua quoted Wang Panpu, deputy director of the awards committee, as saying. The nomination of the Oscar-nominated director drew anger from Chinese net-surfers, who believe the move is undermining China's efforts to protect the environment. "How can Chen be nominated? If a bad example like him can be nominated, then traitors should be nominated as heroes in the same sense," according to a posting on the popular Netease.com website. Chinese film authorities had put the film -- at a cost of 35 million dollars, the country's most expensive movie production -- up for "best foreign picture" at this year's Academy Awards but it failed to win. Chen was also nominated for an Oscar for his 1993 hit "Farewell My Concubine."
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