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Maggie Cheung alert!

She walked the Taiwanese red carpet today in this white number to your left. She was presenting Best Picture at the Golden Horse Awards. The Golden Horse is Taiwanese in origin but it's for Chinese language films regardless of country of origin so it's very competitive now. Warlords and Lust, Caution, which both had international releases, were recent winners of Best Picture.

This year, Maggie handed the trophy to No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti which, if we ever see it in the States, might be called I Can't Live Without You or Not Without You. That's Taiwan's submission for this year's Foreign Language Film Oscar race. The film is from actor/director Leon Dai and it's about a poor man who loses his daughter once the government learns of their illegal living conditions.

No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (2009) from Taiwan

Winners

Best Picture: No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti

Best Director: Leon Dai,...

Warning: minor spoilers

Out German director Monika Treut (Female Misbehaviour, Gendernauts) set out to make a film about lesbians whose sexuality is a non-issue. Consequently, the focus in Ghosted isn't on the relationships between the central characters, but the unfolding mystery about one of their deaths.

Ghosted starts by focusing on Ai-Ling (Huan-Ru Ke), a Taiwanese woman interested in finding out more about her dead father. The only one who could tell her anything would be his brother, Ai-Ling's uncle, who lives in Hamburg, Germany, where he owns a restaurant.

Ai-Ling's mother is not happy about her going to dig up family history, but gives her daughter permission to go.

Ai-Ling (Huan-Ru Ke)

Once in Germany, Ai-Ling meets Sophie (Inga Busch), an artist she falls for after sitting next to her at a movie.

They soon move in together (in true lesbian fashion) and Ai-Ling is able to concentrate on...

The new movie Ghosted is about a lesbian love triangle. Are you intrigued? I was, and I had to know more. The New York Times gave it a so-so review, saying the film "generates an aura of thoughtful storytelling without actually possessing any notable thoughts," but also notes it "offers a refreshingly matter-of-fact view of lesbian relationships — although ones marked by schematic tragedy and intimations of the supernatural — and depicts its cross-cultural milieu with maturity and tact."

Supernatural lesbians? Sounds like my kind of movie.

Ghosted, which opened for limited release over the weekend, follows German artist Sophie Schmitt (Inga Busch), whose girlfriend Ai-Ling (Han-Ru Ke) recently died. Sophie becomes involved with a journalist, Mei Li (Ting Ting Hu), who wants to know all about her work, and they begin a relationship. However, Sophie finds out that Mei-li is a little too interested in her deceased girlfriend, and that she...

Postcard views of Hamburg and Taipei are the main asset of "Ghosted," the return of pioneering lesbian auteur Monika Treut to narrative films after a long stretch devoted to documentaries and teaching in the United States.

Inga Busch plays a German artist who is touring China with a video installation devoted to her late Taiwanese lover (Huan-Ru Ke).

Our heroine rejects the overtures of a sexy Chinese journalist (Ting-Ting Hu) but succumbs when the latter turns up in Hamburg.

The Panorama section will comprise a total of 50 titles with about a third of those being documentaries and here's the first 21 of the list. Oddly enough Dominic Murphy's White Lightnin' will be playing although it's having it's premier at Sundance. Another film we reported on, Uli Lommel's Absolute Evil starring David Carradine will also be playing, and I'm still wondering how the hell they got that in there.

You can check out the list of all 21 titles after the break.

Absolute Evil by Ulli Lommel, USA (world premiere)

With David Carradine, Carolyn Neff, Ulli Lommel, Chris Kiesa

Ander by Roberto Castón, Spain (directorial debut and world premiere)

With Josean Bengoetxea, Cristhian Esquivel, Mamen Rivera, Pilar Rodríguez, Leire Ucha

At Stake by Iwan Setiawan, Muhammad Ichsan, Lucky Kuswandi, Ucu Agustin, Ani Ema Susanti, Indonesia

Panorama Dokumente

Coyote by Chema Rodríguez, Spain (world premiere)

Panorama Dokumente

Der Knochenmann (The Bone Man) by Wolfgang Murnberger,...