Beijing works towards cinema city

The film festival will cooperate with foreign embassies in Beijing to screen some lesser-known films for the Chinese public. Polish, Brazilian and Danish film weeks will be held to introduce those countries' achievements in cinema to Chinese.

With Sino-foreign coproductions becoming increasingly popular in recent years, the 5th BJIFF will hold a forum to explore the future development of cross-border cooperation. Invitees to the forum include director Jean-Jacques Annaud, whose Sino-French coproduction Wolf Totem hit the Chinese box office during Spring Festival, Tom DeSanto, producer of the Transformers series, and Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky.

Film Market, the film industry expo at the 4th BJIFF last year, attracted more than 1,000 companies and organizations in the film industry from China and overseas, signing 32 major contracts worth more than 10.5 billion yuan ($ 1.69 billion) in total, topping all film festivals ever held in China. That raises more expectations for this year's expo.

"Master, market and mass are our foundation to create a top-tier event," says Zhao Zhiyong, deputy secretary-in-general of the film festival's organizing committee. "More involvement of international efforts will help us to better learn the experiences from the world's top film festivals and find our own path for development."

He also expects the festival to help build more segment markets in Chinese cinema, which is often criticized for being too mercenary and lacking productions of high artistic quality.

"We give ourselves three to five more years to make BJIFF the No 1 film festival in Asia," Zhao says. He is confident BJIFF will flourish, despite strong competition in the region such as the film festivals in Tokyo, Pusan and even Shanghai, which has had a film festival since 1993.

"Beijing's resources of filmmakers, media and government support are incomparable. Our next step is to develop a more mature business model through the platforms built by government, and nurture more professionals running the festival."

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