Magnolia in Full Bloom on TV Screen and Across the City

Following the conclusion of the 28th Shanghai TV Festival (STVF), the INTERNATIONAL TV SHOWCASE also drew a warm end. This year, the INTERNATIONAL TV SHOWCASE has furthered expanded the screening channel and platform to cover TV stations, online video platforms and public offline screenings for the benefit of the people with enriched content and themes, making this STVF “a humanistic TV festival at our door step”.

Under the guidance of Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism and Shanghai Municipal Administration of Radio and Television, STVF, Shanghai Mass Art Center and the Shanghai TV Artists Association have jointly launched the public offline screening programme to create a “TV Festival at our doorstep” and make art readily available to nourish the soul.

The programme was specially supported by Shanghai International Culture Center and curated to encompass eight units, including parent-child content, domestic animation, humanities, and overseas hit dramas. There are not only the Best Documentary A LONG CHERISHED DREAM and the Best Animation YAO-CHINESE FOLKTALES honored at this STVF, but also acclaimed masterpieces from the UK, Italy, Finland, France, Poland, Belgium, Russia, Japan and the US, such as POCKET MONSTERS: AIM TO BE A POKÉMON MASTER.

To offer the public an immersive viewing experience, the offline screening venues organized a number of meet-and-greet sessions, where the creators or critics were on site to guide the public to appreciate the works. The tickets were sold out at noon on June 12 instantly after the booking channel was open, with additional sessions arranged at the Yunjian Granary Cultural and Creative Park among other venues. According to our data, there were altogether 35 offline screenings, including 9 expert-guided screening sessions and 8 meet & greet sessions with the casts, and a total of nearly 6,000 people have enjoyed the excellent works from home and abroad at 18 famous venues across the city.

Such a format was welcomed by both the participating creators and the public. At the screening site of INLET, Ms. He Qing, the writer of the hit drama A LOVE FOR SEPARATION, served as a guide expert for the documentary KARAOKE PARADISE and said, “It is great to enjoy a documentary together with so many audiences, and the meaning of TV festival lies right in such cultural communication. It seems that we’re artistically understood by each other, and the feeling of souls colliding with each other was very fabulous, which is also the significance of the public offline screening.” 

Many people believe that the offline benefit screenings reflect the tenderness of Shanghai as a cosmopolitan city. “In fact, having many people watch the drama together reminds me of the days in the 1980s and 1990s, and brings people closer to each other again.” Mr. Li, a citizen, has attended the screening every year, and he feels “happy” every year when “Magnolia smells sweet”. This year’s spectacle has been upgraded again, “Being able to enjoy excellent film and television works in such a public space is itself a blessing to the public. This year’s screenings have become more professional, and the cultural atmosphere of the festival is stronger, thus bringing to Shanghai citizens more happiness.”

The public offline screening programme has provided the general public with a variety of viewing options and redefined the activity of “watching TV”. The British director Malcolm Clarke, who gave a guided appreciation of the documentary film A LONG CHERISHED DREAM, said: “Eight years ago, movies were the most influential visual medium, and today we find that both TV streaming and online broadcasting have become a growing industry with a huge audience base.”

Since its inception in 1986, STVF has been fulfilling the concept of “A City for the People” with people-oriented cultural events, and passing on the spiritual values in excellent works to more citizens through an industry feast. With new formats, “watching TV” is also becoming a new and fashionable urban lifestyle.

While the warm offline screenings were smoothly underway, the online screenings were equally impressive, gathering the latest overseas TV series, documentaries and animation, such as REBOOTING, which was rated 9.4 by nearly 210,000 netizens on Douban. What’s more, this year’s STVF has further expanded the scope of the online platform - in addition to the original local TV channels in Shanghai, STVF has joined hands with the Belt and Road TV Showcase programme launched by the National of Radio and Television Administration to bring the screening activities to more cities in China. Also, the online screening has developed a three-dimensional model of traditional TV platform + video platform, joined by new media platforms such as MIGU and BesTV.

The online screening has presented a total of 6 episodes of the Spanish nautical adventure series LIMITLESS, 5 documentaries from the Kendal Mountain Festival, namely THE FROZEN ROAD, MY BIG WHITE THIGHS & ME, COMMUNITY SEASON, ICEOLATION, and DUGOUT, and 10 series including KARAOKE PARADISE, SEVEN DAYS ON MARS, FAREWELL MY HUMBLE ABODE and BIODIVERSITY ON EARTH - ZHUONAI LAKE, etc. Taking BesTV as an example, the total number of on-demand views of STVF-related programs was 2.1 million, totaling 53,000 hours of broadcast. Offering quality content through an omnichannel strategy, this STVF has delighted the audience in the city or in their respective life with the charm of magnolia either on stage or on TV screen.