2n Beijing International Film Festival
I’m sure this festival is buzzin…
Beijing film festival opens amid China’s movie industry boom
China recently overtook Japan to become the largest foreign market for American films, and the number of screens doubled in five years to 10,700 at the end of last year.
By Jonathan Landreth
April 21, 2012
BEIJING — The second annual Beijing International Film Festival opens Monday amid a film industry boom in China.
Box-office revenue totaled more than $2 billion for the first time in 2011. And in the quarter just ended China overtook Japan to become the largest foreign market for American films, thanks in part to continued movie theater expansion. The number of screens doubled in five years to 10,700 at the end of last year.
That number is expected to rise to 13,000 by the end of 2012, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America. The total Chinese spending on media and entertainment — a figure that lumps together consumer and advertiser expenditures for all forms of filmed entertainment — will grow to $133 billion in 2014, according to the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
That will come as very good news to the visiting American filmmakers whose movies will be among the 200 foreign films featured at the six-day Beijing event — among them James Cameron, whose 3-D re-release of “Titanic” scored the second-largest opening-day numbers in Chinese history, and Tom DeSanto, whose “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” last summer scored the largest.
Cameron and DeSanto will give talks on film franchises and 3-D movies, of increasing importance since the Beijing government in February relaxed restrictions on the number of U.S.-made and large-format films, like IMAX movies, that can play in Chinese theaters and the amount of revenue they can return abroad.
The China National Convention Center — built as the media center for the 2008 Beijing Olympics — will host screenings of recent best foreign film Oscar winner “A Separation,” from Iran; the new release “We Have a Pope,” from Italy; and the closing night film, “The Artist,” from France. (No opening film has been announced.) “The Avengers” star Jeremy Renner will walk the red carpet. Festival attendees may also see other Oscar-nominated movies, including Terence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” and Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo.”
Last year, more than 100,000 tickets were sold to BIFF screenings. But because of censorship issues many of the 200 foreign films at this year’s festival, which join 60 Chinese features, may never be seen by the Chinese public. Others may lose certain moments. A nude scene from “Titanic,” which held the top box-office record for 11 years after its 1998 Chinese release, was excised from the recent 3-D re-release — its absence noted by film fans who saw uncut versions of the movie on pirated DVD copies. Last year’s festival offering “Black Swan” also saw sex scenes snipped.
Among the festival’s panel discussions will be a session with Jim Gianopulos, chief executive of Fox Filmed Entertainment; Marvel International President Simon Philips; Wang Zhongjun, founder and chairman of leading independent Huayi Brothers Media; and China Film Group Chairman Han Sanping.
Han, whose state-owned company is China’s sole importer of films for theatrical release, toured Los Angeles last month with, among others, Dan Mintz, chief executive of Beijing-based DMG Entertainment, a 19-year-old Chinese-American media company involved in film co-productions and distribution in China.
Mintz, who Tuesday announced DMG would co-produce “Iron Man 3” in China with Walt Disney Co. and its Marvel subsidiary later this year, said: “This is really the ride up. You have the perfect storm of coming consumerism, constant shifts by the government to keep things a certain way, and the growth of habitual moviegoing. Soon more Chinese will enjoy going to the cinema.”
Until recently, the Chinese film market has been among the most restrictive in the world. Observers see the relaxation continuing.
“It’s a big thing for [Chinese Vice President] Xi Jinping to push out this policy. It will change the landscape and help all the country’s new theaters,” said Zhang Zhao, chief executive of Beijing-based Le Vision Pictures, the start-up production arm of a major online distributor. Zhang is expected to announce at the festival his company’s distribution plans for Lionsgate’s “Expendables 2,” starring Sylvester Stallone and martial arts legend Jet Li.
Jonah Greenberg, who in 2005 helped open Creative Artists Agency’s China office in Beijing, said China is beginning to be a force on the world movie map.
“China as a film market has finally come into its own and warrants a festival platform for its talent,” Greenberg said.
Beijing Film Festival attracts Hollywood movers and shakers
April 22, 2012 | 8:46 pm
On the eve of the second annual Beijing International Film Festival on Sunday night, some 200 movie industry movers and shakers — many from Hollywood — piled into the trendy d Lounge in the Chinese capital, washing back petit fours and hors d’oeuvres with champagne under the vaulted brick ceilings.
The party was hosted by Rob Minkoff — director of the Academy Award-winning “The Lion King” — and as he and producing partner Pietro Ventani circulated among the guests, Minkoff reflected on how much has changed in China since he first came to Beijing in 1997.
At the time Ventani was helping the Walt Disney Co. set up its China offices and he invited Minkoff for a visit. At that time, there were just a few construction cranes on Chang An Avenue, the capital’s main East-West drag, and few other signs of the city’s future.
Minkoff remembers scoffing when Ventani predicted a boom was coming. Of course, now he’s a believer. He filmed his 2008 Jackie Chan-Jet Li movie “The Forbidden Kingdom” here and marvels at glass-and-steel capital that began emerging that year, when the city hosted the Summer Olympics.
“Like Paris in the 1920s, Beijing is having its world moment right now. If you’re in the movies and you haven’t been to Beijing, you’re kind of missing where things are really happening,” said Minkoff. He himself has another China project in the works — a film called “Chinese Odyssey,” though he declined to give a status report on the project, which has been gestating for some time.
Among those at the Minkoff bash ahead of the six-day, state-run festival were “Superman Returns” producer and former Columbia/Tristar Pictures head Christopher Lee, former Creative Artists Agency China chief Peter Loehr, and “Transformers” and “X-Men” writer and producer Tom DeSanto.
Lee says he sees parallels between the Beijing of today and not Paris but Los Angeles as U.S. studios make a flurry of partnership announcements and jockey for position as the Chinese market takes off. (DreamWorks Animation said in February it would partner with two state-run media companies to build a new studio in Shanghai; Disney announced this month that it would partner with an animation arm of China’s Ministry of Culture and China’s largest Internet company, Tencent Holdings Ltd.; Disney also said last week that it would make “Iron-Man 3” a co-production with Beijing-based DMG Entertainment.)
It’s anyone’s guess as to which partnerships here will become dominant in what’s projected to be the world’s largest movie market in the world in the coming years.
"China is like Hollywood in the 1920s,” Lee said. “We’re all wondering which one of these big Chinese and China joint-venture companies forming is going to have the right a management. How else will China find its way?”
Also mingling Sunday night were USC Film School professor and longtime Woody Allen producer Michael Peyser, Christopher Bremble, chief executive of Beijing-based visual effects studio BaseFX; Aaron Shershow, unit production manager on Keanu Reeves’ upcoming directoral effort “The Man of Tai Chi,” now filming in China; and “Karate Kid” casting director Po-ping Au-Yeung. Also present were Alan Chu, head of film development at DMG Entertainment, and David Lee, producer of the Kevin Spacey-Daniel Wu film “Inseparable” due May 4 in China.
Independent film sales veteran Michael Werner also joined the fete, as did Pete Rive, chair of Film Auckland, and a few rising Chinese industry creative types who’ve shown bilingual crossover skills, including writer-directors Chen Daming (the Chinese remake of “What Women Want”) and Eva Jin (“Sophie’s Revenge”) to the actresses Crystal Liu (co-star of Minkoff’s “The Forbidden Kingdom”) and Zhu Zhu (who appears in Daniel Hsia’s forthcoming “Shanghai Calling”).
Minkoff, whose wife is Chinese-American, bought a Beijing apartment in 2005 sight unseen at the recommendation of his future brother-in-law. If Sunday’s soiree is any indication, he may soon have more expat Hollywood neighbors.
“I thought I was buying as an investment, but I’ve never rented it,” Minkoff said. “I’m staying in it tonight. It’s like a second home.”
