Tired of Hollywood films and Chinese dramas, many Web users in China have turned to so-called microfilms—short, low-budget videos produced by amateur film makers and meant solely for online consumption on the country’s video sites.
But the nascent microfilm industry—which took off in 2010 after “Old Boys,” a 40-minute amateur video about two young men’s struggle to realize their dreams in a fast-changing China, earned more than 80 million views—is facing a challenge after China’s regulators said earlier this week they would require users to submit their real names when posting the videos online.
The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television will require Chinese video sites to run only videos submitted by producers who give their real names or by production companies with official operation approval, according to a notice on its website. The move comes on top of a requirement issued in 2012 that the video sites censor the microfilms before posting them.
Although the moves comes at a time when China has been stepping up online censorship, it’s not clear whether the move is meant to censor content or to impose order on what until now has been a largely unregulated industry. Though most films are geared toward entertaining users, some do push boundaries on sensitive issues like pollution or the wealth gap, often going further than would be allowed on television. As a result some producers do not use their real names when submitting the pieces.
The new rules cite the negative impact some microfilms could have on society to justify the further control, noting it hopes to prevent videos with excessive vulgar, violent or sexual content. China’s leading video websites — Youku Tudou and Sohu — declined to comment when contacted by China Real Time.
Thanks to low production costs and easy access to distribution channels, the videos have grown into an extension of social media, with amateur film makers often creating short videos based on social-media buzzwords.
Xu Zhipeng, vice general manager of marketing at the Beijing International Copyright Trade Center, which co-founded the country’s first financing platform to fund microfilms, noted that the industry lacks a sound production and distribution system, with many producers who aren’t professionals.
“Many of these grassroots producers only focus on maximizing the viewership, so they tend to walk in the grey area by adding erotic and sensational element to the films,” he said.
Nonetheless, the industry has been a hot spot for investment from professional production studios, with microfilm development now holding a fixed part of many companies’ budgets, said Yu Guanzhong, secretary-general of the 2013 Beijing International Micro Film Festival. He noted that microfilm producers also can make money off their videos by selling advertisements. And some even can get picked up by professional studios.
“Old Boys,” the 2010 film, spurred a sequel produced by Youku Tudou and production companies Ruyi Films and Le Vision Pictures that is set to hit China’s theaters in May.
The lack of a standard distribution channel appears to make monitoring the videos a daunting task for local regulators, with oversight falling among a number of government departments including the propaganda department as well as the Ministry of Information and Technology and the online information department of SARFT, said Mr. Xu.
“For video sites, they can only manually censor the content of the videos instead of relying on technology that applies to written word” like censors on platforms like Sina’s Weibo, he said. “So at this moment, it really depends on the quality of the producers for a healthy development of the industry.”