Exhibition puts works on global stage

A host of mainland provinces and cities also set up pavilions at the fair to promote locally made movies and TV works. At the Guangdong pavilion, around 40 local film and TV production companies, including internet giant Tencent and renowned animation producer Fantawild, launched more than 20 news conferences and promotion activities. The companies reached cooperation and intention agreements on more than 30 projects with over 120 domestic and overseas organizations.

Film and TV enterprises from Ningbo, Zhejiang province, signed three contracts worth a record value of 45 million yuan ($6.5 million) on the first day of the expo. Two of them were signed between Ningbo's Plang Pictures and Thailand's Neramitnung Film, and India's Sunshine Film, respectively, over coproduction projects.

Besides the Filmart, a conference discussing the latest trends and opportunities in the film and TV industries, EntertainmentPulse, was staged in conjunction with Filmart. Another long-standing movie event in the city, the Hong Kong International Film Festival, also fully resumed offline activities this year, running from March 30 to April 10. The Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum was held from March 13-15, which is a vital platform for movie producers to seek funding.

Cecil Yow Hon-hung, chief operation officer of the Emperor Motion Pictures — a major movie producer and distributor in Hong Kong, said Filmart, which has been held since 1997 and enjoys an international reputation, is an ideal stage for high-quality mainland productions to go global.

Yow's company is in charge of the overseas distribution of The Wandering Earth II, a mainland science-fiction blockbuster that had raked in more than $570 million at the box offices worldwide by late February. During Filmart, the film's production team, including director Guo Fan and leading actors Wu Jing and Andy Lau Tak-wah, shared stories of making the movie with global investors and media outlets.

Yow said such a face-to-face sharing session was rare even before the pandemic, adding that it offered a great opportunity for potential investors to know how the movie was created, which may increase their interests in and confidence on the production and prompt them to promote the film in more overseas areas.

Alexander Yeung Ching-loong, vice-chairman of Emperor Group, EMP's mother company, said in an interview ahead of Filmart that the overseas theatrical release of The Wandering Earth II in the Hong Kong SAR, Malaysia and Singapore was a good chance to showcase the advancement of Chinese movie technologies and the Chinese way of solving global crises to the world.