Millennium director

"It's a pity that "The Crowd" is a pity."

"It's different now than it was back then. Even if I win the Best Director Award in Venice, I won't have much influence in China."

On the plane back home, Wu Yuan and representatives from China Film Group were chatting about everything about this Venice Film Festival.

During the festival, because he was the president of the jury, he couldn't talk about it. Now that the festival is over, he can finally speak freely.

Wu Yuan said with emotion, timing is really important.

In the first few years of the new millennium, there were not many movies released in China every year. Only three or five movies were released in a month. Sometimes the audience had no choice and could only watch one or two movies in the cinema. Movie.

At that time, there was little news about movies. After all, the output was low and there would not be so much news for the media to report.

Therefore, when Wu Yuan won Berlin's Best Director for "The Embalmer", it was a national sensation. Media outlets of all sizes rushed to report on it, and movie theaters also rushed to pursue the film, which made "The Embalmer" a box office hit after its release.

But now, times have changed.

Nowadays, hundreds of movies are produced every year. Even if most of them cannot be released normally, there are too many movies left behind after the great wave. There are more than ten or twenty movies released every month.

The major media outlets have no shortage of news reports on the entertainment industry, and there is no shortage of movie screenings in movie theaters.

In addition, now is the era of commercial films, and artistic films are no longer the center of attention.

Although they also won the three best director awards in Europe, "Human Mountain" and director Cai Shangjun did not arouse much discussion in China at all.

Even though Xinhua News Agency personally wrote articles to report on the news of this Venice International Film Festival, the effect was mediocre.

The three major European companies no longer attract such high attention in China.

In other words, everyone pays more attention to the red carpet performances of various celebrities at the opening of the three major European events, but they don't care much about who will win the final award.

Fan Xiaopang's dragon robe, Li Binbin's dress with the word "Fu" and other styles will be published in large numbers in China and spread all over the Internet.

But no one cares whether they really took their works to Venice, whether they were shortlisted for the main competition, and whether they won the prize in the end.

"Yes, times have changed." A representative of the China Film Festival who came to participate in this Venice Film Festival also said with some emotion: "It's not even easy to sell movies now."

“You could still make money by approving films in the past, but now it’s getting harder and harder to make money by approving films.”

Nowadays, the domestic film industry is not like the situation where there were only three or two big cats in the past. Every month's theater schedules are fully booked. Even in the slowest months, the number of Lunar New Year movies in the first few years of the new millennium is higher. More.

Audiences have more choices, and there are more domestic film productions. This has forced several mainland distributors such as China Film and Television that are qualified to approve films to no longer care about film approval.

Ten years ago, deputy general managers and vice chairman Han Dong would personally lead teams to Cannes, Berlin, and Venice to purchase films and help mainland films contact overseas distributors.

Now, China Film only needs to send a middle-level representative of the company.

Revenue from copyright transactions has dropped from half of China Film's revenue to less than 10%.

To some extent, this can be considered a good thing.

However, we still have to continue to buy movies in Europe. This is a tilt in national policy. You can't just buy Hollywood movies from mainland China.

Coincidentally, this representative of China Film Group is responsible for the import and export of films at China Film Group.

Wu Yuan followed the topic and asked: "Representative Li, I heard that the Sino-US film cooperation treaty signed when joining the WTO is going to be changed?"

"Are the Americans a little dissatisfied with the results of previous negotiations?"

A document issued as early as 1st clearly mentioned the import of 10 films that "basically reflect the world's outstanding civilizational achievements and express the achievements of contemporary films."

Of course, 10 is just an approximation and can be flexibly controlled in actual operations.

But what is a film that represents “contemporary cinematic achievements”?

Obviously, those are mainly American Hollywood blockbusters.

First, American blockbusters can bring huge economic benefits to all parties.

Secondly, the imported films of that year really opened the eyes of Chinese audiences.

It should be admitted that the prosperity of the Chinese film market is largely due to the "stimulus" brought by American blockbusters.

Films such as "Titanic" and "The Mummy" were introduced under this policy. They also achieved sensational box office and discussion in China, broadening the horizons of domestic audiences.

Later, in 2001, China joined the WTO and signed a series of agreements, including one agreement commitment.

Without compromising the consistency of China's film management regulations, from the time of accession, China will allow the import of films for cinema screening on a sub-account basis, and the number of such imports shall be 20 films per year.

This quota of 20 movies per year is indispensable for any movie.

Of course, most of them are still Hollywood movies, and occasionally one or two are European or Japanese and Korean movies.

However, these agreements refer to films that "enter the country in the form of split accounts", and batch films that are bought out at a fixed price are not included.

Therefore, in fact, the number of foreign films released in the mainland every year is far more than 20, but only 20 of them can be distributed, and the other films are usually bought out at low prices.

In the past, the domestic box office market was not big. 20 Hollywood movies a year could be introduced into the country through sub-account channels, which could already earn a large part of the domestic box office market. Therefore, when this agreement was signed, Lao Mei Na Bian is very satisfied.

However, things are changing. In the past ten years, the domestic film market has increased several times, and only 20 partial-book films are introduced a year, causing Hollywood to lose a lot of market in the mainland.

Many Hollywood blockbusters, because they no longer have movie quotas, either choose to sell them cheaply and adopt the approval route, or they simply give up on the mainland market and do not release them in the country.

The price of approved films is so cheap. China Film and Shanghai Film and Television generally only spend tens of thousands of dollars, and the maximum is hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy out. This is a bargain price, and Hollywood's A-level movies and above are not available. happy to.

Seeing that the agreement signed when joining the WTO has reached the 10-year agreement period, now both in China and Hollywood, there is news that a supplementary agreement will be re-signed. At least 20 more accounts will be introduced in mainland China every year. Movie.

So Wu Yuan also talked about this matter with the representative of China Film Group.

"We have nothing to say about this matter." Representative Li shook his head and said, "The higher-ups have to come forward and talk to the US side."

"And it seems that a delegation will be formed to talk to the United States."

"A great director like you, Director Wu, who is well-known in both China and the United States, should also be a member of the delegation to discuss matters related to the cooperation between the two countries' film markets in the next ten years."

"Director Han will definitely go there as well." (End of Chapter)