Beijing International Movie Festival Set to Takeoff Tonight

Tired of Hollywood Pap? Beijing International Movie Festival Kicks Off Tonight
If you’re a fan of indie movies living in China can be tough. Cinemas dole up wall-to-wall Hollywood blockbusters and local commercial fare, while other screenings can be hard to hear about. So if you’re looking for your cinematic fix of something different, the Beijing International Film Festival rolls into town from tonight, showcasing 57 movies from around the world until June 30.

“In China there’s a big audience for these movies,” comments Peter Salladé, who founded the festival in 2007. “With media so controlled its hard for people to know when, where and how to find these new foreign movies.”

While events like the New Zealand Film Festival are important, by nature they focus on one nation and lack the diversity offered by the Beijing International Movie Festival. Among the festival’s art history documentaries alone are works from Greece, Russia, and Mozambique.

“We take a kind of shotgun approach,” Salladé explains. “If we show a wide diversity of stuff, people can pick and choose and see what interests them. That’s something you don’t have otherwise in Beijing.”

Unlike other festivals, the BIMF is not for profit and is completely paid for out of volunteers’ pockets. Patrice Poujol, an Irish film writer and director whose film Taste will screen at the festival, points out that this is a contrast to other film festivals that cater to more commercial interests. He mentioned several major worldwide film festivals, which generally only accept films from well known directors and leave out those by unknowns irrespective of the quality.

“Peter is very honest, he shows what he wants to show,” Poujol said. “I’d say it’s a proper selection and he’s not influenced by commercial interests. If you go to any film festivals, they know exactly who they’re going to pickup. If you just send a film out of the blue, it probably would never get selected.”

For Salladé, the best part of the festival is the discussions that occur after each film. Even when directors cannot make the trip to Beijing, audience members often end up having a discussion anyway.
“You’re emotionally moved by the movies and then you’re intellectually engaged by the discussion,” he said.

Mark Geng, a native of China and a student of cinema, decided to volunteer for the event seven months ago. He advertises the festival to various universities around Beijing, and says BIMF is important for him because at times the Chinese education system is too traditional. The festival, he said, is an opportunity for Chinese students to exchange ideas and discuss different cultures with foreigners who they may not otherwise encounter.

“Few people here are worldly thinkers,” Geng said. Especially people who study film or media need to understand the ideas and cultures that exist around the world. So if we take these films to other universities and show these movies to other students, they can achieve that goal.”

Beijing International Movie Festival (BIMF) opens tonight (Monday, June 7) with the feature Knowledge is the Beginning, followed by the shorts The Wizard of New Zealand, Parking Space and When Elvis Met Nixon; 5pm, Central Academy of Fine Arts. The festival continues until June 30 at various venues. Full schedule available here. All films in original language with English and Chinese subtitles. Free.