The 2014 China’s Young Filmmakers’ Ceremony was held by China’s Movie Channel, China Central Television 6 (CCTV 6). Eleven active young filmmakers were invited: HAN Han (CONTINENT), GUO Jingming (TINY TIMES), DENG Chao and YU Baimei (THE BREAKUP GURU), CHEN Sicheng (BEIJING LOVE STORY), LI Fangfang (FOREVER YOUNG), XIAO Yang (OLD BOYS: THE WAY OF THE DRAGON), Frant GWO (MY OLD CLASSMATE), Leste CHEN (THE GREAT HYPNOTIST), TIAN Yusheng (EX-FILES) and LU Yang (BROTHERHOOD OF BLADES). The event was broadcast live in China.
LA Peikang, Chairman of China Film Group, and LUAN Guozhi, Deputy Director of the Film Bureau of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), both were present.
Leaders from China’s top cinema circuits also attended this ceremony: YE Ning from Wanda Media, ZHAO Jun from China Film South Cinema Circuit and FANG Bin from Dadi Digital Cinema Corp., to name just a few.
CCTV 6 organized this ceremony to celebrate the youth power in the Chinese film industry, to connect the filmmakers with their audiences and more importantly, to give the young talents a stage to convince the bosses of different cinema circuits that more screening slots would be of great help.
In fact, during the Shanghai International Film Festival, YU Dong, CEO of film studio and distributor Bona, said that thanks to SAPPRFT, July would witness a month of protecting films made by the local young directors against imported blockbusters: more screening slots would be expected to allocate to these five films: The Breakup Guru, Old Boys: The Way of The Dragon, Tiny Time 3.0, No Zuo No Die and Continent.
All the above directors were born in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Some have already acquired tens of millions of box office in the past few months, like Guo Jingming, Chen Sicheng, Frant Gwo and Leste Chen. In a way, they have also made impressive break-through in genre-film-making.
China is now embracing a wave of directors with different back grounds: Guo Jingming came to be known as a controversial writer and a successful businessman, Han Han champion car racers and popular writer, Chen Sicheng and Deng Chao actors, Yu Baimei and Tian Yusheng, screenwriters…
“There is a big difference in the creative environment and economic mode between the fifth and sixth generation directors’ and ours. In the past, directors only needed to consider their artistic expression and did not need to care about the market response. But for our generation, the market is getting highly industrialized and filmmaking needs economic returns. Otherwise, it is difficult to work with a group or seek investors. So as filmmakers, we need to balance our own way of cinematic expression and the market demand,” said Chen Sicheng.
Li Fangfang was the only female director in this group. At 16 years old, she wrote a novel that soon became a best-seller – she then adapted it into a TV drama script and won the nation’s top award in screenwriting. An NYU graduate in filmmaking, she is now making her second feature FOREVER YOUNG, casting A-listers like ZHANG Ziyi and CHANG Chen (The Grandmaster and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), WANG Leehom (Lust, Caution) and HUANG Xiaoming (American Dreams in China). Tsinghua University is one of the major investors of the film.
Comedy, sci-fi, coming of age stories were some of the themes these directors envisioned to make.
Audiences from all over China did participate in this grand ceremony held in Tsinghua University: they were quick in grabbing tickets at a lower price of ￥6.25 (about $1) on group purchase APP-s like Gewara, Baidu and WeChat Movie Ticket. 50,000 tickets were sold within minutes.
New audiences, new market, new media and new platforms for new directors – these were the things that CCTV 6 was celebrating.
CCTV 6 has also been a strategic partner with the Opening Night of Cannes’ Marché du Film for the past 5 years.