Beijing's First Ever International Film Festival

It’s a bit slow on the uptake, but Beijing’s finally getting itself a real, official, honest-to-goodness film festival, complete with “image ambassadors” Jackie Chan and Zhang Ziyi. We say it’s about frickin’ time (for the festival, not the image ambassadors). Featuring 100 foreign and 60 domestic films, the first ever Beijing International Film Festival lights up our city April 23-26.

Ok, so Beijing wasn’t completely devoid of all film festivalishness. There’s the yearly Beijing Screens (北京放映 Beijing Fangying) event, which usually takes place in September. This year, its organizers were convinced by the powers that be to get a five-month jump on things; Beijing Screens is being folded into the BIFF, and will handle the programming for domestic films.

Foreign films will include four of this year’s Oscar heavyweights: Coen brothers cowboy flick True Grit, Mark Zuckerberg biopic The Social Network, ballet psycho-thriller Black Swan and the awesomely cringe-inducing 127 Hours. Besides the US, other countries contributing material include France, Germany, Sweden, Thailand, Russia, Chile, Korea and the UK.

As is expected, it appears the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFTA) – who is partnering with the city’s local government to organize the Festival – has no qualms about making these films “China-ready,” as mentioned in TimeOut’s report of the event. So I wouldn’t hold my breath for the girl-on-girl action Black Swan usually promises (not that I would hold my breath for that anyway…)

Still no word which Chinese films will be showing, but there’s been some buzz about a reprise of Let the Bullets Fly, more screen time for Li Yu’s Buddha Mountain, or even showings of the black comedy Kevin Spacey starred in, Inseparable (which was just cleared by China’s censors a few days ago).

In the past, Beijing Screens was a chaser to the Shanghai International Film Festival, a second chance for distributors interested in Asian films, but who didn’t make it to Shanghai in time. This year, the BIFF is happening before the SIFF (which starts in June), so Beijing is really gunning for status on the Chinese film festival scene here.

Meanwhile, the Beijing International Movie Festival, which got written up in this New York Times blog a couple years ago, was scheduled to happen in June but has been pushed back to October, most likely to make room for the new sheriff in town.

Anybody else as excited as I am that Beijing’s starting to throw its weight around culturally? Film fight!!!!

Those who can read Chinese can poke around at the official BIFF website here (to supplement its less functional English site). Some highlights, participating theaters of the BIFF include: Sanlitun Megabox, Wanda CBD, China National Film Museum, Jinyi Theater in Zhongguancun, UME International in Shuangjing, and the Saga Theater at Solana.

As soon as more information comes, we’ll keep you posted on tickets, venues, and screening dates and times. For now, you can watch this promo video for the festival (don't worry, I'm pretty confident the actual films will be much better quality than said video. Wouldn't take much.):