As the 71st Venice Film Festival embraced "China's moment" with seven
Chinese-language films on show, Chinese and European filmmakers focused on the
global development of Chinese cinema.
Among the seven movies, "Chuangru Zhe" (Red Amnesia) is bidding for the
Golden Lion, the highest prize of the festival, which is to be announced
Saturday night in the Italian iconic water city.
Though "foreign audience always expect to see some astonishing and outlandish
scenes in Chinese movies," said Wang Xiaoshuai, the director of "Chuangru Zhe,"
Chinese movies should stick to China's own tradition and culture rather than try
to cater to foreign tastes.
Therefore, it is of no need to figure out what the foreign audience prefers
to see. Rather, what is essential is to "tell stories of normal Chinese lives
and focus on people's emotion, which is universal," Wang said at the China Film
Forum, the first forum entirely dedicated to the Asian country at the
festival.
Giorgio Gosetti, the general delegate of the Venice Days, an event at the
film festival aiming to draw attention to high quality cinema, agreed that
Chinese cinema should maintain its uniqueness instead of following the Western
trends.
The biggest attraction of Chinese movies for him is strong passion spraying
from their own stories, he told Xinhua.
But as a lot of excellent Chinese movies remain unknown to European audience
and even to European filmmakers, a "bridge" of "professional foreign partners
and better strategies" should be built for promoting and selling Chinese movies
to the rest of the world, Gosetti said.
Senior Chinese and European directors and producers at the China Film Forum,
organized by Xinhua International, a new media sector of Xinhua News Agency,
agreed that Sino-foreign cooperation is a shortcut to overstep "unspoken rules"
that hamper internationalization of Chinese cinema.
It is still difficult for Chinese movies to enter the international
mainstream market, said Qin Hong, producer of "Huangjin Shidai" (The Golden
Era), the festival's closing film by Hong Kong director Ann Hui.
Chinese language is not used as widely as English, and the Chinese cinema
still lacks modern techniques compared with modern Western cinema industries, he
said.
Qin suggested European filmmakers increasingly cooperate with Chinese
professionals and contract-abiding partners to help in distribution and
scripts-writing in the huge Eastern market.