Familiar faces in Venice a boost to China's films?

Zhang Yimou at the Venice International Film Festival in 2007. Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters

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Beijing Bicycle, directed by Wang Xiaoshuai, won the Silver Bear that year.

"We had seven judges on the panel at the time. I didn't campaign for this movie, but several foreign judges liked it very much," Xie recalled.

However, Chen's presence on the jury has boosted expectations for Wang Xiaoshuai's thriller Red Amnesia, the only Chinese movie that has squeezed into the main competition section in Venice this year.

Meanwhile, Chinese pop-singer Zhang Liangying was invited to join the jury of Montreal World Film Festival, which will open later this month. The news came as a surprise to many because her performance resume is almost blank.

"Though the media began to notice people from Chinese cinema make frequent appearances on global film festival panels in recent years, it is not an overnight phenomenon," says Yang Jinsong, a Beijing-based film critic and deputy head of Alibaba Pictures.

"Film festivals are reflections of the world's culture and arts involving different ethnic groups. China has such a large population, so its images are indispensable in these festivals, and it's also common to see Chinese faces among the juries."

Yang considers it an exaggeration to closely connect jury participation with the development of a country's film industry, though he says that those who headed such panels, like Gong Li, had gained strong recognition for personal achievements.

Unlike in Hollywood, Yang says: "The big three film festivals in Europe are not industry expositions, and thus often choose independent films, which are only popular within small circles. The public should keep a neutral attitude when seeing Chinese filmmakers became popular on those occasions."