Streams of Documentaries Feeding the Film Markets
Shanghai Oriental Movie Channel started broadcasting on December 28, 2003. It is a professional channel for 24-hour television series and film and television information on the premises of Shanghai Film (Group) Co., Ltd., covering 8 million households in Shanghai and 24 million people.
As the first local movie channel on the Chinese mainland, the Oriental Movie Channel strives to present the best of both arthouse and commercial Chinese and foreign films and television programs to the audience. This is in line with their principle of “inheriting a hundred-year film culture and sharing a global film and television feast.”
Over the past few years, as Chinese films have become subject to full marketization, commercial films have become mainstream and arthouse films, including documentaries, have been left out in the cold. Bearing this in mind, Oriental Movie Channel insisted on filming some documentaries that would reflect human preoccupations, and successively produced many color widescreen documentaries such as “The Legend of the Sea,” “Chen Jialing,” “The Road to Serving the Country,” and so on. The documentary “Chen Jialing,” about the contemporary major artist, records the whole process behind the artist’s body of work and creations based around soaring mountains and holy sites for Buddhism. The film acts as a voyage through time with the unrivalled Chinese artist, revealing his live and creations, and giving people a more thorough understanding of his inner world.
On October 19, 2014, “Chen Jialing” was shown at the “Honors Screening” at the 9th Rome International Film Festival and caused a sensation in Italy. This was the first time that a biopic about a contemporary Chinese artist had appeared at the highest level of an international film festival. On October 25, 2015, “Chen Jialing” won the “Acacia Award” for the best documentary at the 2nd China-Australia Film Festival. On November 3, 2015, “Chen Jialing” won the “Golden Angel Award” for the best Chinese documentary at the 11th China-US Film Festival. On November 16 of the same year, “Chen Jialing” won the Documentary Achievement Award at the 35th Hawaii International Film Festival. Mr. Chen Jialing was recognized as the “Cultural Ambassador” of the 35th Hawaii International Film Festival. This was also why Shanghai’s first documentary has won so many high-profile international film festival awards since 2010.
Picture; “Chen Jialing” won the Documentary Achievement Award at the 35th Hawaii International Film Festival
Picture: “Chen Jialing” won the best documentary award at the Chinese American Film Festival.
“Chen Jialing” and other films have won numerous awards both within China and abroad, which proves that excellent documentaries are both popular and global. This also provides Oriental Movie Channel with the experience and confidence to shoot high-quality documentaries in the years to come too. In the future, it plans to shoot a series of documentaries exploring masters of technology and Shanghai artists.