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Because movie productions save 60 percent in taxes paid when shooting their overseas scenes in Prague, the Czech Republic is fast becoming the favorite shooting location when abroad by Chinese directors.
Besides the lower cost, the European nation offers nice locations such as a lot of castles and chateaux, which are added plus factors why Prague was the location for the 2015 Chinese film “Somewhere Only We Know.” The production was originally scheduled to shoot the movie in Paris but changed plans eventually.
To further entice Chinese producers to its capital city, the Czech Republic and China inked in 2015 a memorandum on film exchanges and cooperation in a bid to stimulate tourism development in the country, according to Czech Deputy Minister of Culture Katerina Kalistova.
As a result of Chinese being exposed, through “Somewhere Only We Know,” of the beauty of Prague, the number of Chinese tourists jumped to 250,000 last year from only 17,000 a decade ago.
The movie, directed by Xu Jinglei, starred Wang Likun, Wu Yigan, Zhang Chaoo, Re Yu Zha and Xu Jinglei. It interweaves two love stories set in Prague, one in the 1940s and another in the present time. Although Variety described the film as drowning in “unbearable triteness of cinematic tourism,” the entertainment website also noted that Xu wisely tapped the latest fad for boy bands and foreign dates among mainland Chinese women.
Variety commended the professional tech credits to the widescreen lensing of postcard-worthy scenery by Mark Lee Ping-bin, it found mysterious that while present Czech use their native tongue in the present part of the movie, those who lived in the 1940s spoke English even to one another.
Czech are happy with the flow of tourism dollars, especially residents of places where foreign movies are shot because the town receivers 20 percent of the taxes paid by the movie producers, reported CRI.
