CHINA’S film industry should support indie films to keep them from being drowned by big-budget commercial films as the domestic market grows fast. This is a common appeal made most recently by Chinese director Jia Zhangke and senior executives of the Toronto International Film Festival.

    “As the film industry in China enters a new stage, we keep our fingers crossed that while trying to attract a universal audience, Chinese filmmakers remain true to their culture and local stories,” says Piers Handling, president and CEO of the festival. Handling was in Beijing and gave a public talk with Jia last month hosted by the Canadian Embassy in Beijing.

    He advises the Chinese film industry to take heed of the situation in the United States, where massive productions are elbowing personal films out of the cinema.

    More talented filmmakers have turned to TV series production. “There is less restriction and it’s easier to find funding to showcase their personal styles and experiment with new ideas,” Handling says, adding that U.S. cinema is losing its audience for films other than blockbusters patterned after TV productions.

    In China, it is the Internet that is attracting filmmaking talent and bringing “both positive and negative” changes to the film industry, says Jia, the scriptwriter and director of the Cannes-honored film “A Touch of Sin.” The film premiered in North America at the TIFF in 2013.

    Jia was honored with the director of the decade award by TIFF in 2010, with three of his films included in the “top 30 films in the past decade.”

    Jia will act as a jury member at the upcoming 67th Cannes Film Festival scheduled to be held from May 14 to 25. It’s the second time for Jia to work as a jury member at the French film festival. In 2007, Jia was appointed the jury chairman of Cinefondation, a Cannes program for short and medium-length motion pictures from film schools.

    “As short film gains online popularity in China, a new type of film production company, which focuses on making films to be shown online, has sprung up in the country,” Jia says.

    “These companies offer more opportunities for young filmmakers. However, they may at the same time drag down the overall quality of the film industry,” he says.

    “It’s difficult for people working in these companies to develop their professionalism, as they may frequently change their jobs to adapt to the everchanging Internet.”

    The Internet is changing the ways of making and watching films in China: the audience can even participate from the beginning of film production — by making investments.

    Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group launched the investment platform Yulebao on March 26, in which an individual could invest in movies and/or games starting from 100 yuan (US$16). The first four projects — three feature films and one game — are expected to draw investments of 73 million yuan through Yulebao.

    China’s film industry, according to Jia, remains one of the most popular recreational sectors.

    “Investments are still flowing into the industry. More than 600 films were made last year, not including those indie films that were not calculated in official statistics,” Jia says.

    “However, lacking a marketing mind, Chinese indie filmmakers don’t get much benefit from the film market’s growth.”

    He calls for more exchanges between commercial and indie filmmakers in China because “actually they need each other’s help.”

    “Some Chinese films get lost in content when they go all the way to meet the audience’s interests. They need to learn from indie filmmakers how to speak out in a personal voice,” Jia says.

    Jia is also concerned about the shortage of creative producers who are capable of delivering the director’s personal voice to the general audience. This lack shows “the immaturity of the industry in China,” Jia adds.

    “A director shouldn’t think about how to sell the story to the market when he or she writes it. That’s the producer’s job. But when I cooperate with young Chinese directors, they are concerned about marketing — even more than me — which is really sad,” he says.

    Improving marketing is critical for Chinese films that want to reach overseas markets.

    Twenty-two Chinese films hit the big screens in North America in 2013 and the total box office was US$7.84 million, almost double 2012 ticket sales, according to figures from boxofficemojo.com, a box office tracking website with more than 2 million visitors per month under IMDb.com.

    However, US$6.59 million of that was spent for “The Grandmaster” starring Zhang Ziyi, while the box offices of the remaining 21 added up to only US$1.25 million. “Lost in Thailand,” a comedy whose box office on the Chinese mainland was nearly 1.3 billion yuan ($208 million), made only US$57,400 in North America.

    Cameron Bailey, artistic director at the TIFF, admits that kung fu is still the most popular element of Chinese movies for overseas audiences because “action can be understood beyond language barriers.”

    But he thinks that what tripped up “Lost in Thailand” in the North American market was more than the difficulty of understanding comedy in a foreign language and the lack of a global star like Zhang.

    “It needs much stronger promotion. Few people in North America heard about it before it was put on show,” Bailey says.

    “To succeed in an overseas market, a film needs to tell a story of universal values to overcome language barriers, feature global stars familiar with foreign audiences and have good promotion.”

    (SD-Agencies)