Shanghai Film Festival Embraces Sci-fi Genre, With Retrospectives, Panel Debates
variety.comPatrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief After a golden age in the 1980s, Chinese filmmakers were quietly discouraged from dabbling in the sci-fi genre – it isn’t real science and authorities did not want youngsters to get confused.
That stance changed during the last decade and the Shanghai International Film Festival has just hosted its first sci-fi week, comprising nearly a dozen film screenings and a trio of panel discussions featuring the new luminaries in the sector.
Reasons for the revised position of China’s authorities are not hard to understand. Not only was Hollywood getting away with dominating a genre that was popular with Chinese audiences, China in the 21st century has become a global technology powerhouse.
Its space program, in particular, is now among the most advanced, capable of a normalized rocket launch schedule, international co-operation and lunar and interplanetary missions. “A great sci-fi film can successfully arouse people’s curiosity to explore the universe and nature and induce people to think profoundly,” the Shanghai festival said in notes accompanying its event. “Organizers want to innovate and promote Chinese sci-fi films to overseas audiences.
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