Beijing talks up Euro co-production

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Policy/Legal Feature

Film-makers, officials and executives named half a dozen reasons why Chinese cinema should co-produce more films with Europe — an area of activity that is currently under-developed.

Film Bureau chief Tong Gang said that co-productions provide technical and cultural benefits as well as expanding the market potential for the film concerned.

Zhang Xun, president of the China Film Co-Production Corporation, dished out some dismal statistics. She said that of the 340 official co-productions made by Chinese companies since 2000 only 29 have been made with Europe.

Ng See-yuen, a veteran Hong Kong industry figure, pointed to the way that the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, a treaty between the separate jurisdictions of Hong Kong and mainland China, had helped lift Hong Kong out of a film-making downturn and had notably allowed Hong Kong firms to share in profits earned across the border in China.

Dennis Wang, co-chief of Huayi Brothers, chronicled the recent history of co-productions by Chinese firms. He said an early phase was based on financial necessity, when Chinese companies struggled to raise appropriate budgets from within the country. This phase was at its height when Hollywood studios, notably Columbia and Disney, and when Hong Kong companies were major partners. Now, with ballooning box office receipts in China, "money is the least important factor," he said. "Instead we are seeking marketing partners."

Huayi has not made a European co-production to date, though Wang said he was open to the idea as it might help ease the shortage of actors and directors in China. "Movies and TV series are getting postponed in China because actors schedules are already too full. Globalisation of production could be a solution."

Yu Dong, head of rival private-sector conglomerate Bona Group, was similarly forward looking. He forecast that the Chinese theatrical market could triple in size to RMB30 billion in the next 5-8 years and that "we will need experienced directors and producers." "We will have to co-produce some English-language films," he said.

Bill Kong, whose Edko firm produces in both Hong Kong and China, said that the Chinese marketplace is heavily skewed to theatrical box office and that the commercial life-cycle of films is half a year. Co-productions with Europe, where there are TV quota requirements, can enjoy a considerably longer tail. "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon would have done better with agreements in place," he said.

That was a theme also underlined by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud who described Europe's 'cultural exception' (an exemption from free-trade treaties intended to protect culture) as giving him residual revenues for many years. He is now preparing to spend a year in China shooting Wolf Totem from 2012. "If it becomes [an official] co-production that would really be a first," he said.

France has an official treaty that was signed last year.

UK producer Phil Agland made an plaintive appeal for a co-production treaty between China and Britain. With two TV documentary series under his belt that shot in China he said the country is much more flexible than outsiders may first imagine. His Shanghai Vice series documented crime, murder, trials and execution. What makes the impossible doable is the cultivation of good relationships.

His company is now in preparation for White Wolf, a thriller about a Henan Province bandit who kidnapped foreigners for ransom, It is to be shot next year in partnership with the Tianjin North Film Studio.

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