Chinese and Indian filmmakers announced three film co-productions on Friday at a press conference in Beijing during the ongoing Beijing International Film Festival.
The three key Sino-Indian projects include "Like Stars on Earth," a new Chinese adaptation of the Indian actor-and-director Aamir Khan's classic of the same title; Siddharth Anand's action film "The Jewel Thief" produced by China's Peacock Mountain Films with Han Sanping as executive producer; and Kabir Khan's comedy "The Zookeeper" about a young Indian man's incredible journey to China.
Liu Quan, chairman of Creastar, shared his vision and the development of China-India co-productions at the press conference. As the leading figure in Chinese-Indian cultural exchanges, Liu said his company will bring new forms of cooperation and support to its Chinese film peers. In addition to the three film projects, his company can also offer its counterparts assistance in the entire value chain of film-making. This includes the areas of sourcing for artists, filming, marketing and promoting films.
The Indian movie producer and distributor Parsad Shetty, and a partner of the Indian talent management agency KWAN, also introduced possible models of cooperation in various fields including actors, directors and screenwriters, and promised he would strive to jointly create a "brilliant" future for Chinese and Indian films.
Liu added that a film culture exchange association has been created between both countries with support from the Chinese government, "We hope that through this association, the filmmakers of China and India will grow closer. Together, we can interact with and learn from each other, we also hope that more filmmakers will join it. We will work together to achieve win-win results and contribute to further cooperation between China and India."
According to "Indywood: The Indian Film Industry" report released by Deloitte, the Indian film industry is the largest in the world in terms of the sheer number of films produced. This number ranges between 1,500 to 2,000 and also spans some 20 languages. In terms of revenue, the industry has a gross box office revenue of $2.1 billion, which is expected to grow at an 11% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). It is projected to reach $3.7 billion by 2020. Riding on this growth, Indian film studios will also have to start looking at international markets to increase their revenue.
The relevant departments of the Chinese government decided to push forward on the cooperation between two countries in 2015. Chinese and Indian film cooperation has since then entered a new stage alongside the rapid development of the Chinese film industry.
In the past few years, Aamir Khan's "Dangal" opened the doors to the Chinese film market. It had a box office income of 1.29 billion yuan (US$193.78 million) in China, the second largest film market in the world. "Dangal" is so far still the highest grossing Indian film in China, but other critically acclaimed films such as "Secret Superstar" and "Bajrangi Bhaijaan" followed shortly after and became successes in China too. In addition, there were other successful Chinese-Indian co-productions too, such as Jackie Chan's "Kung Fu Yoga."
These films not only achieved unprecedented success in China, but also changed Chinese audience's stereotypes of Indian films. This new generation of films came with diverse themes, and gave Chinese audiences a new understanding of Indian films. At the same time, Chinese films have also made great progress in terms of their quality of production, and China has also become a huge market for Indian movies.
Sino-Indian cooperation could reshape the landscape of the world’s film industry, and this was one of the highlights of the 9th Beijing International Film Festival. This also addresses the issue of the continuous development of China's economy and the deepening of the Belt and Road Initiative.
In this festival, the closing film will be the Indian film "Zero" directed by Aanand L. Rai and a major forum the "China-India Film Co-Production Dialogue" was also held on Thursday. It was attended by film executives and filmmakers from both countries, as well as the Indian superstar actor Shahrukh Khan and director Kabir Khan.
Shahrukh Khan said in the forum, "We must fully respect each other's resources, respect each other's markets, and break any barriers together."
He added, "Movies all over the world have similarities and something universal. When I was growing up, Chinese movies also had a lot of influence on me. Although our languages are different, there are many similarities in our cultures. We both have rich historical and cultural traditions that have been deeply rooted in our hearts since our childhood. What we have to do now is to dig deeper and uncover more commonalities in there."
Source: china.org by zhang rui
