A total of 37,000 service teams are working in the rural areas of China, having screened nearly 2,000 free movies in the past five years for farmers, a film administrator said in Beijing Sunday.

"Their goal is to have monthly movies shown in each village across the country," said Zhang Pimin, deputy director of the film bureau of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT).

China has 900 million farmers, comprising 70 percent of its population. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the farmers' per capita income in 2005 was around 3,200 yuan (US$410).

In contrast, the total box office revenue in 2006 was 2.62 billion yuan (about US$327.5 million), an increase of 620-million-yuan over last year, according to the SARFT.

The central government provided in the past five years nearly 7,000 projectors, 1,068 floating projection vehicles, 376 camps for movie projection, and 22,000-plus movie copies to the western regions and underdeveloped areas in China, Zhang said.

(Xinhua News Agency February 26, 2007)