Telling Good Stories at Beijing International Film Festival

　　President Xi Jinping has always stressed the need to seriously learn from the excellent literature and art created by people around the world, and to make foreign things serve China, to be innovative, to combine Chinese and Western elements, and to achieve mastery. It is a basic starting point of Beijing International Film Festival to tell good Chinese stories and to disseminate Chinese good voices. Beijing International Film Festival is committed to the lofty mission of reflecting the times and leading the times, promoting the Chinese spirit, gathering the Chinese power and serving for the development of Chinese films by taking the Festival as a base; and to enhance China's international communication capabilities by facing the world, spreading the Chinese culture, and highlighting the Chinese characteristics.

　　Demonstrating cultural diversity is a way of telling good Chinese stories. Beijing International Film Festival takes Western cultural symbols as part of its ingredients. Keats's verses, film dialogues in English, "the Phantom of the Opera" and "Auld Lang Syne” and other Western classics appeared at the opening and closing ceremonies in a perfect combination of Chinese cultural elements and Western cultural symbols, so the filmmakers with different cultural backgrounds from around the world can enjoy the rich and profound Chinese culture in a delighted mood. The Film Festival highlights the displaying of multi-themed and multiple styled film cultures from different countries, fully reflecting the "diverse cultural exchange" principle. Over the past five years, 45 excellent films from 26 countries have been shortlisted to Tiantan Award; 21 films from 14 countries have won various awards of Tiantan Award; 1,370 films from more than 90 countries and regions have participated in Beijing Film Panorama, revealing the charms of world's diverse film cultures and different film styles from various countries. This year, 15 films out of the 433 films from 42 countries and regions stood out to be shortlisted and compete for the 10 awards of Tiantan Award. 2,329 films in 105 countries and regions have signed up for the panorama, highlighting the international influence of Beijing International Film Festival in promoting multicultural exchanges and development.

　　Creating international standards is a way of telling good Chinese stories. The Festival embraces filmmakers and their works from countries and regions all over the world, making the Festival ambitious and magnificent while fully embodying the inclusiveness of Chinese culture. The jury members of Tiantan Award are from Russia, the United States, France, India, and China and many other countries and regions, representing the Eastern and Western aesthetics and attitudes with the realization of unified evaluation standards of multiple cultures. Over the past five years, James Cameron, Luc Besson, Alfonso Cuarón, Oliver Stone, John Woo, Keanu Reeves, Jean-Jacques Annaud, Tsui Hark, Zhang Yimou and a group of master filmmakers, as well as more than 800 elites of the industry and industrial representatives have participated in various activities in the Festival, fully reflecting Beijing International Film Festival’s widespread industry awareness and growing international influence and appeal.

　　Embodying the professional authority is a way of telling good Chinese stories. Beijing International Film Festival reflects the highest level of international film art development through high level dialogues, ideological collision, exchanging of experiences, analysis on trends, leading cutting-edge hot topics, and more. Over the past five years, 17 Theme Forums were held at Beijing International Film Festival, by inviting Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Jim Gianopoulos of Fox Filmed Entertainment, Co-CEO Wendi Deng of Bigfoot Studios, Hollywood Director James Cameron and other distinguished guests of the international film community, to focus on global film trends, increase mutual understanding between Chinese and foreign film makers, expand the international perspective of Chinese film industry and to bring efforts to enhance the globalization of film development in China. The three major forums of the 6th Beijing International Film Festival are to be joined by Italian Director Giuseppe Tornatore, American director, actress Natalie Portman, Chinese-American Director Raman Hui, Indian Director Rajkumar Hirani among other guests. Sino-Foreign Film Co-production Forum  will be centred around the topics of "experience sharing of international cooperation production" and "how to transcend the cultural localization of the co-produced films"; Chinese Film Merchandising Industry Summit will focus on the derivative industry, making keynote speeches and discussions on market review, development trend, market differences and the copyright protection of movie derivatives; Summit on the Beauty of Film will hold dialogues on the creation, evolution and prospects and other issues of comedy movie.

　　II. Telling good Chinese stories, fostering new talents and new works, constructing the "industrial incubator" for the development of Chinese and foreign films

　　As said by President Xi Jinping, "The international community looks forward to hearing the voice of China, seeing the Chinese programs, and China is not to be absent." Film is the world's most widespread form of art. Film festival is an important platform for ideology exchange, wisdom collision, and talent inspiration. The promotion of Chinese culture, telling Chinese stories, enabling the world to understand China, is both the development demands of Chinese film industry itself and the needs of understanding to Chinese film industry of the outside world. Beijing International Film Festival holds practical high-end business exchanges and transactions, and has become one of the most active, most attractive, and largest scale film markets in the world. Friends of the film industry at home and abroad are welcome to take the Beijing International Film Festival as the "industrial incubator" to expand areas of cooperation, bring innovation to the forms of film cooperation and achieve win-win industrial cooperation as well as to effectively promote the great development and great prosperity of the film industry both in China and in the world. 

　　Supporting young talents and fledging projects. Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF) undertakes the responsibility of forwarding Chinese and the world’s film industry and plays the role of an industrial incubator, which provides support for fledging talents, works and projects. It organizes main crew and cast news conferences, new film release conferences and premieres for the talents and new works to promote themselves; it creates the “Film Critics’ Recommendation” section to discover, advocate and support promising young people; in the “Film Critics’ Recommendation” section, top-notch films are screened, Chinese and international directors and filmmakers win fame and support; the “Forward Future” section identifies latest trends and encourages originality; the New Chinese Film Talents Fund Forum and MPA Award, co-organized with Cannes Film Festival and Motion Picture Association of America, etc., facilitate young talents’ access to cross-cultural communications; Project Pitches Award and Best Business Potential Award are set to promote project pitches and endorse young practitioners. 

　　Initiating the new models for incubating projects. The film industry is a category of the “attention economy” and boasts huge commercial and brand value. Beijing film market is no exception to the law of the film market and fully recognizes the effectivity of resource allocation by the market. We use platforms of “trade of film factors” and “trade of pitch projects” for demonstration, promotion and transaction, invite distinguished experts on different segments within the film industry, and make a point of tapping into the potential of the shortlisted projects, so as to produce qualified projects that cater for market needs and have market potentials. Since we established the “Project Pitches” section at the second session of the festival, it has continued to thrive, so much so that in the fifth session, the number of projects reached 455, rising 100% from a year earlier; in the 6th Beijing International Festival the “Project Pitches” section gathered up to 674 projects, rising 48% year-on-year, with unprecedented amount and speed. The quality of works and participation of enterprises saw impressive growth. Emerging internet entertainment enterprises also joined the festival with quality works, 50% of which took part in the pitches for the first time. 

　　Advocating a holistic view of film industry development. Beijing International Film Festival is committed to forwarding the development of every segment of the entire industry, actively shaping the market for the trade of films and creating a platform to provide continued and complete services, in order to create opportunities for discussion and negotiation among buyers, sellers, investors, and filmmakers from all over the world. In this way, the film industry information flow has been accelerated and trading cost effectively reduced. More and more filmmakers, producers, promoters and film organizations and projects compete to promote themselves and find cooperation opportunities on the occasion of the Beijing International Film Festival. Since five years ago, with the rapid development of the film industry, more than 2,900 film companies and organizations and 20,000 film practitioners have been involved in this event, during which deals have been made in all the segments of the film industry. In the 6th Beijing International Film Festival, over 200 companies and organizations from countries including China, America, Britain, Germany, Finland and Israel have come for demonstration, negotiation and transaction. Participants specialize in creation, production, distribution, brokerage, marketing, promotion and technology, etc., and demonstrate expertise including box office market big data and advanced film technologies, which provide a glimpse into the latest trends of global film industry. 

　　III. Telling Chinese stories well, pioneering the film market and guiding world film development

　　President Xi Jinping noted that fine literary and artistic works should be not only ideologically and artistically successful, but also be popular in the market. Art and commerce are always inseparable from each other. The growth of BJIFF follows the general trend of China's film industry.

　　China's book office earnings soared from 13 billion yuan in 2011 to 44.069 billion yuan in 2015, up nearly 240 percent compared to the North American film market whose book office earnings were up less than 9 percent. In 2015, global book office earnings were up 3.5 percent year on year, while China was the biggest contributor to the global film industry with its book office earnings up 48.69 percent year on year. Since the beginning of 2016, China's book office earnings have soared with 6.87 billion yuan in February alone, ranking first in the world. With the fast growth of the China's book office earnings, Beijing's film industry has exploded. In 2015, there were 182 cinemas and 1,050 screens (one for 21,000 viewers, ranking first in China) in Beijing; Beijing registered book office earnings of 3.15 billion yuan ahead of other large Chinese cities, and 874 million yuan in the first quarter of 2016, up 26.4 percent year on year; Beijing produced 291 films, accounting for 42 percent of all films produced in China; Beijing had 13 films among the top 20 of the Chinese book office, accounting for 65 percent; Beijing's four films were among the five Chinese films with book office earnings of over 1 billion each.

　　These figures show that China's film industry has become a major force of the global film industry, and Beijing has become a real oriental film capital. Thus, through the important promotional platform - BJIFF, we should tell Chinese stories well, establish the position of Chinese films in the global film industry, and pioneer the new-round development of the global film pattern, so as to make Chinese films guide the development of world films, the global film industry and global film technologies.

　　Focusing on the frontier topics of world films. The theme forum of BJIFF takes a distinct position: telling "good stories" through Chinese films, expanding the creative space of Chinese films and enhancing the on-screen charm of Chinese culture in the global context. Over the past five years, BJIFF has invited prestigious directors, producers, COOs, experts and professors from around the world as guest speakers. Based on problems at all levels pressing for solutions to the global film industry, they explored and dissected the trend and direction of China's film industry and the global film industry from multiple dimensions, focused on frontier topics, interpreted policies and analyzed cases, and discussed cooperation strategies and the mechanism of resource sharing, so as to create a new opportunity and open up a new path for accurately grasping the law and trend of the global film industry and promote all-round cooperation between China and the rest of the world.

　　Pioneering the development of the film industry. Over the past five years, 116 projects have been contracted during BJIFF with a total amount of 41.164 billion yuan, making BJIFF Asia's largest film market. The film market maintains prosperous this year, over 200 domestic and foreign enterprises have signed up for the 6th BJIFF, covering fields such as creation, production, distribution, brokerage, marketing, promotion and technology, and a lot of new technology enterprises represented by VR enterprises participated in the festival. In terms of exhibition category, production companies remain dominant, roughly account for 44 percent; promotion and marketing enterprises and institutions roughly account for 26 percent, increasing enormously from last year; film and television technology companies roughly account for 10 percent, up nearly 100 percent from last year; copyright sales and agency companies roughly account for 12.5 percent, taking on a trend of growth, showing the growing attention of the industry to copyright and IP. Notably, a lot of new technology enterprises represented by VR enterprises participated in the festival, marking that the integrated development of media has entered a new stage and become a new highlight in the film market.

　　Focusing on the trend of film technology innovation. By virtue of book office big data, film & television technology and VR, BJIFF has vigorously supported and encouraged the popularization of films reflecting the new trends and technologies of industrial development, established professional service platforms for domestic and foreign exhibitors, and provided multiple solutions such as road show, new film release, strategy release, forums and dialogues, salons and receptions, to meet the needs of domestic and foreign film institutions for brand, business and project promotion. Also, BJIFF has fully employed Beijing's advantage in the agglomeration of film & television resources, given play to the specialties of partners, improved convention & exhibition services through the Internet, and endeavored to enhance specialized services. This year, Beijing Film Panorama joins hands with "Gewara + Weipiao" to open up online and offline ticketing channels, establishing a unified ticketing platform to offer filmgoers convenient, considerate and accurate services.