CRI听力:Sydney's International Chinese Film Festival Growing

The fourth International Chinese Film Festival in Sydney, kicked off with a screening of the much talk-about Chinese version of "Dangerous Liasons."

Festival founder and executive director Gong Lanwei started the event back in 2009 because she felt there was a hole that needed filling in the Sydney culture scene.

"In Australia there are 600,000 Chinese and in Sydney alone there are 300,000. And there are so many other film festivals like French film festivals and German film festivals and 50 other film festivals. And as a multi cultural city I felt I needed to fill that gap."

Jeannette Paulson Hereniko is the president of AsiaPacificFilms.com and founder of the Hawaii International film festival.

She says events such as the International Chinese Film Festival give communities an opportunity to get excited about movies.

"People can be exposed to films that they would never pay to see at a regular movie theatre but there is something about the excitement and passion, love of film during a festival that captures the imagination of entire communities and pushes forward films from China or films from what ever country is being highlighted."

However Gong says originally the festival was attended mostly by members of the Chinese community in Sydney.

"In 2009 when the festival just started like 80 percent of the audience where Chinese but now there are more and more local audience that know this festival. And surprisingly there are so many people interested in Chinese culture, in Chinese history and in Chinese films."

But Gong says the western audience in Sydney gets particularly excited about Kung Fu films.

Kung fu film – an action film is the kind of film that a western audience will love to watch. But now I think more and more people are interested in historical films as well. Then also comedy - this year we do have a Hong Kong film called Vulgaria and the western audience received it quite well. They got the sense of humour."

The fourth International Chinese Film Festival in Sydney wraps on Saturday night with an award ceremony and a screening of Taiwan director Tom Lin's "Starry Starry Night."

For CRI, I'm Emily Hennessy.