China\'s Documentary Industry Gaining Momentum for Brighter Future, Forum told
The guests were giving brilliant insights on the current status and prospect of Chinese documentary market.
The prospects for China\'s documentary industry are looking bright for the next few years in terms of growing markets and multi-platform broadcasting, experts told at 2016 Shanghai International Film and TV Festival forum yesterday.
The forum, titled "The Spring of the Documentary - New Forces Driving the Chinese Documentary Industry," revealed that domestic documentary income reached a record of 400 million yuan this year.
In addition to traditional TV advertising income, Chinese documentaries are now able to extend sources of revenues to Internet crowd-funding, overseas markets and the cinema box office.
Professor He Silu, an expert from Communication University of China, said the new forces currently driving the Chinese documentary industry include policy, market, technique and audience.
Gan Chao, chairman of Yunji Media, has recently produced several documentaries that achieved high audience ratings, such as "The Tale of Chinese Medicine" and "Survivor Games."
He revealed that later this year the company will shoot a documentary about Asia with KBS, as well as a sequel to "Survivor Games." A mobile phone game for "Survivor Games" will also be produced.
"We will set up two new subsidiary companies - one focused on the development and commercial operation of original documentary content, the other a production company for short documentary films for new media," Gan said.
Insiders expect to see more capital investment in this field and more overseas documentary production studios being interested in cooperating with Chinese producers.
Yesterday\'s festival also held the Sino-Italian Cultural Communication and Mutual Reference Forum which discussed the prospect of Sino-Italian documentary co-production.
Cooperation will be strengthened in film making, broadcasting and promotion. A few co-produced documentary projects about architecture and people are now underway.