Finding Freedom in China on Film: A Q&A with Jia Zhangke

 /  People  / 
Like all of Jia’s films, "Mountains May Depart" contains strong social commentary. The film, which stars Jia’s wife, Zhao Tao, explores freedom: how one conceives of it, what one does to get it, and how others try to limit it. Read More

Copyright Pledges in China Film & TV Finance

 /  Legal  / 
Though a framework exists, the registration of pledges is not yet common in the Chinese film and TV business. Read More

Will Blockbuster ‘Lost in Hong Kong’ Revive Chinese Tourist Numbers?

 /  News  / 
With a declining number of mainland visitors and slumping retail sales to match, Hong Kong is betting on the success of smash hit comedy Lost in Hong Kong to turn its luck around with Chinese tourists. While Chinese travelers are flocking to destinations like Japan to shop for the current Golden Week, Hong Kong retailers Read More

French Director’s Chinese Movie Balances Freedom With Compromise

 /  People  / 
In 2012, French movie director Jean-Jacques Annaud got a warm welcome in China after more than a dozen years as persona non grata there for having offended official Chinese Communist Party history with his 1997 film Seven Years in Tibet—the story of a German mountaineer’s sympathetic relationship with the young Dalai Lama before the monk Read More

China’s Film Industry Online, Part 4. It’s About Copyrights.

 /  Legal  / 
This is the final post in a series looking at developments in China’s digital ancillaries market. In this series we’ve seen that China’s ancillaries are still comparatively small despite explosive box office growth. In part 1, I looked at how China leads the world in online consumption and how China’s consumers prefer to use mobile Read More

China’s Film Industry Online, Part 3. Production and Distribution Converge in Cyberspace

 /  Legal  / 
This is the third in a series of posts looking at developments in China’s digital ancillaries market. Part I is here and Part II is here. In this post I comment on the impending online convergence of motion picture production and motion picture distribution in China. Online giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (collectively, “BAT”) have each Read More

China’s Film Industry Online, Part 2. Mobile is Key

 /  Legal  / 
This is the second in a series of posts on developments in China’s digital ancillaries market. Part 1 is here. In this post I consider the potential for growth in ancillary revenues from handheld devices. With around 380 million Internet shoppers expected by 2016, China is leading the world in online consumption. As Alibaba founder, Read More

China’s Film Industry Online, Part I

 /  Legal  / 
China’s theatrical box office market may be huge but the ancillary revenues (i.e. non-box office) are still relatively small in China. This is the first in a series of posts on developments in China’s digital ancillaries in a lead-up to the US-China Film Summit, which I will be attending along with a number of other lawyers from Read More

China Motion Picture Copyrights

 /  Legal  / 
China joined WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) in 1980 and it introduced its first copyright law in 1990. China adopted modern intellectual property laws as a condition of joining the WTO (the World Trade Organization) in 2001. Read More

China Entertainment Contracts, 101

 /  Legal  / 
I touched on this topic during my recent webinar for the China-Britain Business Council about China Film Intellectual Property. Most of my comments apply equally to all industries, not just the film industry. Chinese contracts are usually simpler and shorter than contracts used in the West. The specialized vocabulary taken for granted in Western film contracts Read More

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