IP Plan 2024 launched in Hunan

The "Image Possibilities" Coproduction Plan 2024 has started soliciting proposals for short videos, short and long documentaries and adaptations of existing videos from home and abroad to tell Chinese stories.

The launch ceremony for IP Plan 2024 was held in Changsha, Hunan province, on Tuesday, with the event hosted by China International Communications Group, CCTV-9, Discovery Channel and Hunan Broadcasting System.

The first IP Plan, from 2022 to 2023, saw 62 documentaries win support.

Apart from soliciting videos and documentaries that have already been made, the plan also invites creative ideas and offers teams professional training, guidance and funding in video making and adaptation as well as media exposure, according to the organizers.

Outstanding proposals will be broadcast on CCTV-9 and other international media channels.

The plan encourages filmmakers to understand what's happening in China and what the true China is, they said.

Malcolm Clarke, a British documentary filmmaker and a mentor for IP Plan, said it is getting more difficult to find a platform and an audience for Chinese content in the West.

There is a political decoupling happening right now and there is also informational decoupling when it comes to getting Chinese-based films a wide audience in the West, he said.

China's rise is seen by many people in the West as a challenge to Western values and economic domination, Clarke said. What that means is that documentaries and programming that show China's technological progress, how it builds, how it expands, and its scientific discoveries are very interesting in the West, but also somewhat threatening, he said.

"However, if we understand the true nature, kindness and integrity of the Chinese people, then all the technology, all the inventions, all the great developments technologically, can be seen in the context that we can trust the Chinese government and the Chinese people," he said. "We need to develop trust."

There is a need for more filmmakers from all over the world — and more filmmakers from China — to be making films about China, Clarke said.

Arthur Jones, British filmmaker and documentary director and a participant in the first IP Plan, said language can be a barrier for foreign filmmakers and directors when making films about China, but can also be an advantage as they can make the film as an outsider.

Documentary filmmakers observe people and places, he said. For example, he is currently making a documentary about rural children in Yunnan province and he finds them as complicated as any children elsewhere, with their own failures and successes.

"What I am filming is the commonalities of people," Jones said. "No matter how strange the places I go to, I find people there are more or less alike. From their expressions and their behavior, I can relate to their feelings."

Du Zhanyuan, the head of China International Communications Group, said he hopes Chinese and international directors and filmmakers can join hands to record the footprints of China's reform and opening-up, the hardworking Chinese people and how the country develops, and share it with the world.

From small angles and personal perspectives, they can reflect grand themes and present a trustful and respectful image of China to the world, he said.