Ethnic film event concluded in Guangxi

The third Sanyuesan Ethnic Groups Film Culture Week, a six-day event which aimed to bring the limelight to silver screen stories about ethnic groups, drew the curtain in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Wednesday.

Receiving more than 100 submissions from across China, the event, which kicked off on April 28, had screened a total of 17 movies, including the biographic drama Huang Wenxiu, the Tibet-set flick Kong and Jigme as well as Why Are the Flowers So Red, adapted from the true story of an ethnic Tajik border patroller.

The event is named after Guangxi's iconic Sanyuesan Festival, which is annually celebrated on the third day of the third month in the lunar calendar. The festival has been an important occasion for finding love, worshipping ancestors and praying for a good harvest.

The event also held a series of activities including a themed forum to discuss the history and development of movies about ethnic groups.

Ouyang Wenfeng, a professor at Central South University, said that Guangxi has played a crucial role in Chinese cinema history, with some of the country's most renowned directors such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige beginning their careers at the region's largest studio, Guangxi Film Group.

While working in Guangxi, Chen directed his debut feature Yellow Earth, with Zhang serving as the cinematographer. The movie was one of the earliest Chinese films to receive international recognition and was released domestically in 1984. A year later, it won the Silver Leopard award at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.

As a sign of the region's aspiration to enhance its presence in Chinese cinema, Liu Kun, deputy director of the publicity department of the Communist Party of China in Guangxi, expressed his hope to draw and inspire more talented filmmakers to participate in the production and creation of ethnic feature films.