Filmmakers at Venice Film Festival eye Chinese-foreign cinema cooperation

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.