Fuzhou Hosts Silk Road International Film Festival

By Usui Hiroyuki

With its prestige rising, the festival may be pointing to an alternative future for the international film industry

On Dec. 3, 2017, the weeklong 4th Silk Road International Film Festival was coming to a close. In the evening that day the sky was covered with clouds over the city of Fuzhou, in southeastern China’s Fujian Province.

In the early evening, a red carpet event was held outside Fuzhou Strait Olympic Sports Center where the closing ceremony was soon to start.Sixty-three-year-old megastar Jackie Chan appeared as the very last actor or filmmaker to walk the red carpet. He posed momentarily for photographers and then hastened to an outdoor stage shaped in the form of a ship.

The figure of the ancient trade ship symbolizes the history of Fuzhou as a Maritime Silk Road starting point and thus made it suitable for the city to be a host of the film festival along with Xi’an in northwestern China’s Shaanxi Province, the starting point of the ancient Silk Road.

China’s Film Industry

On Dec. 3,2017, the closing ceremony of the 4th Silk Road International Film Festival is held in Fuzhou Strait Olympic Sports Center.

The festival, which was launched in 2014 and has been held in each of the two cities in alternating years since, is one of many cultural events linked to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road was first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 as the country’s ambitious effort to build an interconnected community of nations along the route. The project, although primarily aimed at economic cooperation and in particular infrastructure construction,is also intended to enhance people-to-people ties and cultural exchanges among the countries concerned.

In the closing ceremony that followed the red carpet event, Jackie Chan was named Golden Silk Road Actor of the Year for his performance in Kung Fu Yoga, the first ever Sino-Indian joint production of a film which depicts a Chinese archaeologist’s treasure hunting in India. In his acceptance speech, Chan spoke on the responsibility that China’s filmmakers have to bear, including sharing Chinese culture with the world through the films they produce.

In fact, the need for China’s film industry to achieve global popularity was one of the topics discussed during the festival. On Dec. 2, during a film critics forum, Yin Hong,a professor at Beijing-based Tsinghua University and a film critic, expressed his view that if China overall is going global, Chinese film directors will also come to grasp how the international film industry operates and learn how to succeed in an international film market.

Left: At the closing ceremony of the 4th Silk Road International Film Festival on Dec. 3, 2017, well known Chinese director Xie Fei(left) and actress Jing Tian present a trophy to Jackie Chan, who is awarded as the Golden Silk Road Actor of the Year.

Right: The movie Where Has Time Gone, the first co-production by BRICS countries,receives the Judges’ Special Award at the closing ceremony of the 4th Silk Road International Film Festival held on Dec. 3, 2017.

It’s not easy to predict a hit in China, and film critics and analysts have pointed out a recent trend that Chinese audiences are moving away from Hollywood movies.

The World Comes to China

Although Yin Hong’s remarks reflect the realities that China’s film industry is facing today, another reality is that the world is coming to China in terms of film. This is because China’s film market has grown at a rapid pace.

It is reported that an average of 22 new cinema screens were unveiled in the country every single day during the year 2015.It is also predicted that over the next couple of years, the Chinese box office may surpass that of North America and become the world’s largest.

Hollywood is eager to woo this huge market, and that is why its executives, directors and producers often attend events such as the Beijing International Film Festival.However, it’s not easy to predict a hit in China, and film critics and analysts have pointed out a recent trend that Chinese audiences are moving away from Hollywood movies.

In the beginning of 2017,nobody foresaw the historymaking megahit in China that was Dangal, an Indian film starring 52-year-old iconic actor Aamir Khan, who performed the role of a former wrestler who trains his two daughters to be wrestling champions. The movie eventually finished up with$195.8 million in box office revenue in China. Incidentally,two years ago Aamir Khan gave priority to the film, rejecting an offer to appear in Kung Fu Yoga.

In this year’s film festival in Fuzhou, India was not represented, but Yin Hong did not forget to point out that the artistic level of Dangal is something that Chinese cinema must learn from. Two years ago, the South Asian country was a guest of honor at the festival, with several films participating.

This year, another foreign,non-Hollywood film became extremely successful in China:Bad Genius from Thailand, a comedy about smart students making a large amount of money out of an examination cheating scheme. It took in more than $40 million in China.

An Alternative Future Emerging?

The unexpected hits of these two films in China suggest that the Chinese film market has already become an arena for the movie industries of various countries to compete and gain the support of China’s moviegoers.

Huang Jiangzhong, a Chinese film director and the chairman of the 4th Silk Road International Film Festival’s judging panel, was quoted in an interview as saying: “This year the festival is only four years old. We should have a long view on events such as this.”

If the festival is indeed to succeed, it will help forge a totally different future for the international film industry in which Hollywood may no longer have the final say.