娱乐英语新闻:Vancouver film community eyes China business

VANCOUVER, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- When the Vancouver International Film Festival kicked off Thursday night, Mayor Gregor Robertson gave a special greeting in Mandarin to a delegation of visiting Chinese film producers.

Robertson, a distant relative of famed Anti-Japan War hero Dr. Norman Bethune, noted the excitement of hosting the Chinese Films Producers Association, saying "the possibility for a really potent partnership exists here highlighting B.C.'s competitive strengths on the international stage."

With British Columbia's reputation as "Hollywood North," a moniker that stuck when U.S. film and television producers first started coming to Canada en masse in the early 1980s to take advantage of a weak Canadian dollar, the province has increasingly been looking for new business to further expand the industry.

After recording 1.31 billion Canada dollars in total film and television production in 2009, mostly from Hollywood, last year saw the number drop to 1.02 billion Canadian dollars, according to the B.C. Film Commission.

The strength of the Canadian dollar, now about even par with the U.S. greenback did not help, nor did a tax incentive from rival production center Ontario to lure new film and TV production business. In turn, B.C. responded by raising the value of its foreign film tax credit to be competitive.

B.C. producers have been looking to China in what they view as huge potential for co-productions, funding and distribution, among other cooperations.

Harry Sutherland, a Vancouver-based producer, currently has financing to develop six pictures "on the Canadian side" over the next two years. As soon as his production company can find a partner in China and "we've got the money in the bank," work can begin on writing scripts in Canada.

The industry veteran, who spends about one of every three months in China, told Xinhua that he has been visiting the country regularly over the past six years, developing projects and talking to people.

A current project, The Tea Merchant's Wife, is to be shot in China next spring. It will be produced independently and distributed through the China Film Group.

"We've put together an equity fund here in Vancouver. It's a development fund because what we realized is where Canada fits in really well with China is, if they want to do international pictures, they need more script development, what we would generally call development," Sutherland said in an interview with Xinhua.

"We spend a lot of time developing projects here, whereas in China, because the industry has grown so quickly, there's less emphasis on development, but there's lots of money for production."

With the script writing in Canada and most of the financing for production coming out of China, Sutherland said his projects are designed so they work economically in the Chinese marketplace first. The Chinese investors get their financing back, and then the Canadian partner controls the international sales to get his investment back.

He points to My Big Fat Greek Wedding as an example of the potential for independently-produced films. The 2002 sleeper hit, a Canadian-U.S. co-production, was made for 5 million U.S. dollars and took in nearly 370 million U.S. at box offices around the world.

Typically, Sutherland is looking to produce films with budgets in the range of 2 million to 5 million Canadian dollars, or what he calls "date movies," genre pictures, thrillers, romantic comedies and action adventures.

"Right now, because of the leveraging financing out of China, it's very easy for us to find the development financing here in Canada. So we're in the end looking at putting in about 30 percent of the actual budget costs out of Canada, but you are getting the full international picture," Sutherland said.

"It's what we call a natural co-production. In other words, both countries are putting in what they do best at a given time."

Wesley Lowe is another looking for financing for his production Staged, a psychological thriller about a North American pianist accused of murdering his Chinese girlfriend. The Chinese-Canadian has been to China 10 times in the last four years, most recently in June, meeting industry people.