“Sino-Foreign Film Co-production Forum” is a professional platform for filmmakers at home and abroad to discuss Sino-foreign film co-production and development. The Forum will invite film professionals at home and abroad to be guests to explore best methods of Sino-foreign film co-production via conversation. Contents of conversation include “experience sharing of international co-production” and “cross-cultural creation and innovation of co-produced films”.
I. Introduction to hosts
Photo source: Harper's Bazaar Huang Jianxin
Chinese film director, producer who is vice president of China Film Association right now and was president of China Film Directors’ Guild from 2003 to 2011.
As one of the Chinese fifth-generation directors, he directed many films such as The Black Cannon Incident, Dislocation, Samsara, “Stand Straight, Never Give In”, The Wooden Man's Bride, “Back to Back, Face to Face”, Signal Left, Turn Right, Ambush, Xian's Finest, Get Out Your Secret, Who Cares, Gimme Kudos, The Founding of A Republic, Beginning of The Great Revival, and was awarded nearly 100 film prizes at home and abroad, including Top Ten Chinese-language Film Award of Hong Kong International Film Festival for three times and Taiwan Film Prize for twice. The films produced by him include Together With You, A Battle of Wits, The Warlords, Mummy 3, Bodyguards and Assassins, Qian Xuesen, Angry Kid, The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom, The Taking of Tiger Mountain 3D and Wu Kong.
Iain Smith (English film producer)
Iain Smith was born in Glasgow and graduated from London Film School in 1971. After working in London for several years, he came back to his hometown Scotland and produced My Childhood, one of Bill Douglas’s awarding trilogy for British Film Institute. He and his partner John Susting established his own production company to produce advertisements, documentary films, feature films for children and low-budget drama and produced La mort en direct which was directed by Bertrand Tavernier and starred by Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel and Max von Sydow in 1978. One year later, he, David Putnam and Hugh Hudson co-produced Chariots of Fire which was starred by Ian Charleson and Ben Cross. After that, he continued cooperation with David Putnam and participated in Local Hero which was directed by Bill Forsyth and starred by Burt Lancaster and Peter Riegert, The Killing Fields which was directed by Roland Joff and starred by Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor and The Mission which was starred by Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons as the production manager and he also produced The Frog Prince starred by Brian Gilbert.
Education background
University of California, Berkeley
English major
(Doctor of Philosophy)
(Master of Arts)
(Bachelor of Arts)
Cinematographic works (selection) film producer\ playwright\ director:
Rage (2015), Taking Woodstock (2008), Lust Caution (2006), Brokeback Mountain (2004), The Hulk (2001), X-Men (1999), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (1999), Ride with the Devil (1998), The Ice Storm (1996), Siao Yu (1994), Eat Drink Man Woman (1993), The Wedding Banquet (1992), Pushing Hands (1991)
Rajkumar Hirani (Indian director)
Rajkumar Hirani was born in Nagpur, India.
Over the years, he created and directed four films popular in both India and around the world. His debut Munnabhai M.B.B.S. is a humanistic and humorous film which tells a lovely reactionary gang to be a doctor. His second film Lage Raho Munnabhai is the sequel of the first one and the film was well received by film critic and common audience and became one of the top selling films in India. His third film Three Idiots became the super box-office winner again and is one of the films with highest box office in history of Indian film. The most recent film P.K. raised box office triumph created by his former three films again. The film was enlightened by ideas and thoughts of sages in history and culture reformers with human, faith and the phenomenon of this being called “God” explored and human customs criticized. The film caused a big stir in India and even around the world.
In addition to commercial success, Hirani got numerous awards for his films.
Photographed by Stefano Schirato
Giuseppe Tornatore was born in Bagheria, Palermo, Sicily, Italy. He was devoted into drama, photography fields and made a large number of documentary films at his early years. In 1989, he, aged 29, and playwright Massimo de Rita co-created the play Camorrista and he himself directed the film. Since then, Tornatore began his career of director. His Cinema Paradiso made and directed by him drew international attention widely for him and the film was awarded with the Oscar Foreign-language Film Award. After that, films directed by Tornatore were frequently awarded with prizes internationally and achieved success.
Famous stars who worked with Tornatore include Ben Gazzara, Jacques Perrin, Marcello Mastroianni, Michele Morgan, Sergio Castellitto. Laura del Sol, Philippe Noiret, Tim Roth, Gerard Depardieu, Roman Polanski, Monica Bellucci, Michele Placido,Geoffrey Rush and Jeremy Irons, etc.
Natalie Portman (American director and actor)
Being an Oscar movie queen, Natalie Portman is a producer also a philanthropist. In 1994, she surprised audience with excellent performance in Leon directed by Luc Besson when she was only 11. Later then, she starred in more than 25 movies, including The Beautiful Girls, Anywhere but Here, Where The Heart Is, Cold Mountain, Garden State, Closer, V For Vendetta, Knight of Cups, THOR, THOR 2: Dark World and Star Wars Trilogy directed by George Lucas. In 2011, she was nominated in Oscar for second time with Black Swan directed by Darren Aronofsky and finally won the movie queen awards. The movie Planetarium in which she starred against Lily Rose Depp and Jackie in which she acted as Jackie Kennedy, wife of President Kennedy will be wide released this year. Moreover, Natalie has confirmed to star in Annihilation, the second movie by Alex Garland which had attracted much attention, and a biographical film of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a famous American justice.
Portman also had undertaken backstage duties many times. The movie A Tale of Love and Darkness Written, directed and starred by her as well as a producer, was adopted from memoirs of Amos Oz. Other works directed by Portman included the short film Eve and one section of New York I Love You. In addition, she had participated in the production of Important Artifacts by Paramount Pictures with Plan B Entertainment as a producer and the documentary adopted from Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Except for deep cooperation with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Natalie Portman is also an ambassador of “Free the Children” organizations as well as the ambassador of Dior, a worldwide known brand, since 2010 to now. She graduated from Harvard University majored in psychology and once learnt in Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Raman Hui (Chinese-American director)
In 1989, Raman got a job in Pacific Digital Imaging (PDI) as an animator. As a part of PDI acquisition by DreamWorks, he entered DreamWorks officially in 2000. Since 1998, he had participated in many successful animated movies produced by DreamWorks as an animation director, including ANTZ, Shrek, Shrek 2. From 2007, Raman Hui was promoted to a director and jointly directed Shrek the Third as well as many producing of animation features and short films, including the Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five, Scared Shrekless, Puss in Boots: The Three Diablos. The movie Monster Hunt directed by Raman has a domestic box office exceeding 2.4 billion yuan.
Yu Dong (CEO of Bona Film Group Limited)
Yudong, founder and Chairman of the Board of Bona Film Group, born in Beijing in 1971, graduated from Management Department of Beijing Film Academy in 1994, and created Beijing Bona Cultural Exchange Co., Ltd in 1999, which was the first private film issue in China corporate and obtained the first “Film Distribution License” issued by SARFT. In 2008, he started to specialize in EMBA of Cheung Kong Graduate School and the class president in Tsinghua University. In 2009, the company was duly renamed as Bona Film Group Limited which was successfully listed on New York Nasdaq with group executive team led by Yu Dong in December 2010. As a founder and leader of domestic film producing company, the only one with whole industry chain layout and strong distribution capacity, Yu Dong, together with “Bona” aircraft carrier created by him, has a next target to march in international market.