When the first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, to honor films released in 1927/28, there was no separate category for foreign language films because most of the films released in 1927 and in 1928 were silent films. Between 1947 and 1955, the Academy presented &lt;a href="Academy%20Honorary%20Award"&gt;Special/Honorary Awards&lt;/a&gt; to the best foreign language films released in the United States. These awards, however, were not handed out on a regular basis (no award was given in 1953), and were not competitive since there were no nominees but simply one winning film per year. For the 1956 (29th) Academy Awards, a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films, and has been given annually since then.