Paving the road to cultural exchange through film

By Niu Mengdi
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China Today, September 21, 2017
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The 2017 BRICS Film Festival in Chengdu, part of a series of events of the BRICS Summit of this year, to be held in Xiamen, started on June 23, and lasted five days, screening a total 33 BRICS country films. Among them, 10 films including Soulmate, The Second Mother, and Lady of the Lake competed for a total of five prizes, including best picture. The China-led Where Has the Time Gone?, the first film to have been co-produced by the five BRICS countries, and the South African Mrs. Right Guy, were shown at the opening and closing special screenings during the festival respectively.

Production team of Where Has the Time Gone presents at the opening ceremony of the 2017 BRICS Film Festival. 



In this year's festival, the five BRICS countries promoted cultural exchange, national understanding, and economic cooperation through film. The head of the Brazilian delegation and Brazilian Ambassador to China Marcos Caramuru de Paiva stated, "My hope is for the five BRICS countries to use the BRICS Film Festival as a platform to further deepen mutual understanding, communication, and exchange."

The BRICS Film Festival was established in 2016, and each BRICS country takes a turn hosting it every year. The first was held in India, the second in China, and the third will be held in South Africa.

A Joint Production

The opening film Where Has the Time Gone? is the first film to have been co-produced by the five BRICS countries, and the production brought together film directors from China, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa, each taking the theme of "Where Has the Time Gone?" to create a short film. Executive producer and director of the Chinese short film Jia Zhangke said, "The theme of ‘time' corresponds to development in the five BRICS countries: each is in the process of rapid economic growth, all are facing huge social transformations. I hope that through exploring this theme we can follow the changes in individual experiences and community life in these rapidly developing societies."

The Chinese short film Meeting the Spring, directed by Jia Zhangke, is about the second child policy in China, and tells an emotional story which closely follows the Chinese of today. The Brazilian part is set in the wake of the real-life event of the collapse of a damn at an iron ore mine, and represents the lust for life and hopes for the future in the aftermath of the disaster. The Russian director Aleksei Fedorchenko uses "Breath" as his title, and depicts the complicated emotional redemption of a couple living in seclusion in the mountains. Indian director Madhur Bhandarkar's Mumbai Mist describes the moving friendship between an old man and a 10-year-old orphan. Rebirth, made by the most watched contemporary South African director Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, describes the story of a female laborer in a virtual future world, who has not reconciled with the idea that the fate of all humans is preordained, and risks her own life in her quest to change her destiny.

Representatives of the Indian delegation on the Indian Film Day – a sideline of the 2017 BRICS Film Festival.



"This is an extremely challenging and interesting piece of work." Jia Zhangke has been very frank in saying that it was not at all easy to find a theme that artists from the five countries with vastly different languages and cultures are all attracted to. "Human emotion is universal, there are no borders." Where Has the Time Gone? has triggered huge reactions from the audience. South African director Sarah Blecher said, "This film is wonderfully diverse, it's more than just a film, it allows audiences to experience different cultures."

China hopes to continue this model for cooperation, and plans to release one co-directed film by BRICS countries every year up until 2021.

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