A Chinese entertainment website has proposed moving the annual Berlin Film Festival to mid-March for it to attract Chinese movies.
China Entertainment News sees that period as one possible workable window because many Chinese film makers would rather stay in the country during the annual Spring Festival than fly to Germany for Berlinale scheduled every mid-February.
Although the Lunar New Year is a moving one depending on the full moon’s appearance at the start of the year, it usually falls within Berlinale. What happens is only Chinese film makers with commitments attend the Berlin Film Festival.
That’s because Spring Festival is the most important holiday in China, similar to Christmas in many countries. It is even worse, because in the Asian giant, most businesses close for seven straight days as millions of Chinese travel to the province to eat sumptuous food on the eve, receive red envelopes filled with lucky money, watch local films and reminisce their days as rural youth.
A few movie makers did go and win awards. These includes “The Valley of the Lost Soul” (Wang hung gu) in 1958 and “Red Sorghum” in 1988.
A veteran film agent who has a China business compared the situation to the Toronto Film Festival also coinciding with the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur. However, the agent also noted that because of the proximity of Toronto to Los Angeles and New York, where many Jewish film producers are located, all it takes is a few hours to fly to the Canadian film festival and return to the U.S. to attend to their faith’s holidays.
That’s not the case for Chinese who would need 13 hours of flight to reach the German capital city, where the 66th Berlinale also opens this week with a variety of fare. The lineup includes movies about shepherd in New Zealand, a film on a reclusive American poet and a Berliner who left anti-Hitler propaganda.