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The Confucius Institute at Sofia University Organizes Its First Festival of Modern Chinese Cinema

The Cinema House hosted a Modern Chinese Cinema Festival which included nine modern Chinese films of various genres and topics. The films had received a number of awards and nominations at prestigious international fora: the Berlinale Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Montreal World Film Festival, and many others. It was the first time most of them had been shown in public in this country.

The festival was opened by Mr. Deyan Statoulov, Managing Director of the Cinema House; the latter claimed he was only too happy to host the event. He also said he was deeply moved to welcome so many guests at the cinema hall: their attendance bore witness to the interest they showed to a kind of art, such as the Chinese cinema, that is not intimately familiar to the Bulgarian film audience.

Ms. Antonia Tsvetkova, Head of the Confucius Institute, pointed out that that was the first film panorama of modern Chinese cinema held in this country. The idea behind the event was to present the Bulgarian audience with the top achievements of modern Chinese cinema. Ms. Tsvetkova summed up briefly the strong points of the festival: on one hand, she laid emphasis on the selection of the films, the latter had been chosen from among a large number of prize film titles from world festivals; on the other, the films are representative of contemporary Chinese life in terms of their topics, style, ideas, and the various points of view they offer to the audience. Antoniya Tsvetkova concluded that the films would equip the Bulgarian audience with a horizon broad enough to trace the processes in the progress of Chinese cinema.

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Another praiseworthy achievement of the festival was the fact that the organizers had provided the films with subtitles closely following the original, still clearly rendered to the Bulgarian audience interested in contemporary and traditional Chinese culture.

Antoniya Tsankova expressed her gratitude to all who had contributed to the successful organization of the event.

Associate Professor Andronika Martonova, PhD, of the Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, presented the first film of the festival, “Postmen in the Mountains”, and introduced the audience with the characteristic features of modern Chinese cinema.

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In Yali, cultural attaché at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China to this country, congratulated the staff members of the Confucius Institute on the effort they did not spare to organize the festival. He pointed to the fact that cinema had become popular in China shortly after the advent of the seventh art and by 1905 the first Chinese film had been premiered. In Yali also observed that Chinese cinema exerts ever stronger influence on the world film production process. According to him, the prevalent part of the films included in the festival’s program are feature films, yet much can be learnt from them concerning the social values and the development of modern China and the future vistas opening up to the Chinese cinema of today.

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Amongst the emblematic titles of the festival are films such as “Cin Hun” directed by Won Shaoshuai, awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005, “Cuco Sili” directed by Lu Chuan, awarded the “The Golden Bear” Prize at the Berlin Festival, “The World” directed by Jia Zhangke and awarded at the Toronto Film Festival.

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During the opening ceremony of the festival in the foyer of the Cinema House the photo exhibition “The Confucius Institute – a Bridge between Two Cultures”, dedicated to the Xth anniversary of the foundation of the Institute, was presented. An exhibition of books about China, published in Bulgaria, was also put on.

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