The Shanghai International Film Market will relocate to new premises as it makes a return in June 2023 as an in-person event.
The Shanghai International Film Festival and the accompanying market were both cancelled last year due to the COVID crisis and China’s strict disease prevention response. This year’s festival will be a silver jubilee, or 25th, edition.
The market will be held within the Longemont Hotel, less than a mile from the Crowne Plaza Hotel that for many years has been the hub of the film festival. In recent years, the market has operated from a downtown exhibition center, that has necessitated a taxi, bus or subway journey for participants attending both elements.
The market is expected to mix conventional and metaverse elements. “A C-end film and television sub-venue will be added, integrating the domestic and foreign XR short film sections of the film festival, the film and television cultural equipment experience area, derivative products, and TV festival benefit screenings to create an on-site experience with the theme of ‘Technology and the Future’,” organizers said. “The audience can interact with virtual people on the screen [and] on the spot, experience motion capture, and feel the cutting-edge technology of film and television.”
Another new component this year will be the launch of the International Film and Television Cloud Market, allowing executives not in Shanghai to participate virtually.
Organizers have opened submissions for the festival, market and project market. But none of the events have yet confirmed exact dates.
The Shanghai festival was launched in 1993 and was accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) as the first and only international competitive feature film festival in China. To date it has held 24 editions, the last in 2021 attracting over 4,000 submissions for its main competition section.
“The holding of every SIFF has vigorously driven the development of China’s film cause and industry, as well as the improvement of the Shanghai’s core competitiveness and cultural soft power, while continuously meeting the cultural needs of the people who love films. It is the film festival that has called forth a better city life and a livelier city,” organizers said in a welcome message.