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PERSPECTIVE

Viewpoints from the frontline of content.

Asian Side up

By Content China 31-03-2015

The sixth edition of Asian Side of the Doc, which took place in China for the second consecutive year, has been a huge success.

What's Up Doc? CineDoc China

What’s Up Doc? CineDoc China panel

Attended by more than 600 delegates from 38 countries, including 130 decision makers, this year’s market featured wider participation from Asia (77%), while 23% came from Europe, North America and the rest of the world.

Producer and broadcaster delegations came from Japan, Australia, Germany and France. There were more than 40 international distributors and 60 exhibiting companies on hand.

Held at the Royal Victoria Hotel in Xiamen on the South-East coast of China from March 17 to 20, 2015 Asian Side of the Doc Xiamen International Documentary Conference was designed to gather the international documentary community and maximise investment and coproduction opportunities involving some of Asia’s fastest-growing markets.

Yves Jeanneau, CEO of event organiser Sunny Side of the Doc, said before the market: “The documentary genre is growing in Asia. We see more networks and online platforms allotting slots for documentaries. Our responsibility is to bring them the best, most compelling stories that are well told and well produced.

“In Xiamen, we shall see the extension of the Asian documentary market and spotlight new opportunities for financing and distribution (broadcasting, cinema and internet release). Asian Side of the Doc is surely the marketplace opening a ‘two-way bridge’ to reach curious and open-minded audiences all around the globe.”

A series of agreements were signed during the event and a number of projects were launched. At the Summit of Documentary Fund, representatives from China, France and Brazil signed three agreements for doc development and coproduction, marking an important moment in the countries’ TV collaboration history. The deals were:

  • Xiamen Culture & Media Group (XCMG) entrusted Doc-Services with the development and financial set-up of the project Once Upon a Time on Koolangsu.
  • XCMG and Voyage, Fox International’s French channel dedicated to travel, agreed to coproduce a documentary about Xiamen city.
  • XCMG and SP Cine (Brazil) signed a letter of intention for a documentary coproduction fund.

Phoenix New Media’s video channel V.ifeng.com launched the Create Your Doc documentary campaign on March 18. This aims to gather individuals and groups involved in documentaries to form a website and television transmedia experience.

With filming equipment getting more compact and huge improvements in mobile video resolution, the era of the citizen doc seems to be approaching. More and more individuals and groups wish to make video records and to share them with others. Create Your Doc will stimulate this trend of diversified live recording, to provide professional guidance and later on show it on various broadcasting platforms.

Leading Chinese and international documentary distributors introduced themselves, pitched their latest shows and outlined the topics that they are looking for at the Distributors’ Showcase.

3C Media brought Surprising Daddy, a factual entertainment show, to the event. Oriental Companion Distribution’s project is a documentary about The Legend of Miyue, a TV drama that will launch in late 2015.

Also, panel discussions at Asian Side of the Doc attracted attention, such as What’s up Doc? CineDoc in China, about the CineDoc festival. Fan Lixin, Qi Bolin and Barthelemy Fougea shared their ideas on the subject, which reflected different situations in mainland China, Taiwan and France. It is the differences that help us to learn from each other.

As for the projects unveiled in the pitch session, they demonstrated the lives of ordinary people. At the awards ceremony, My Dear Lines won Best Chinese Project, while Best Asian Project went to The Tielman Brothers: And the Birth of IndoRock and Best International Project to Worse Than War – Fighting Ebola in Liberia’s Bong County.

Being part of Asian Side and witnessing the change in the Chinese and Asian markets, Content China believes that documentaries have a promising future here, and the market is ready for more.

Please email your Chinese news to [email protected] and stand by for the next update from the country’s leading content business website.

today's correspondent

Content China

ContentChina is a joint venture between C21Media and Beijing-based 3C Media, delivering international and local industry news to the Chinese broadcast and production community.

Launched last year, the site translates C21Media.net into Mandarin, adding exclusive news and features generated by a team of local journalists. The move marks the start of an ongoing collaboration between 3C Media (formerly Shixi Media) and C21 to develop a significant publishing brand in China. The initiative has been developed in association with the Chinese government’s media regulator, SARFT. You can visit the website by clicking here.



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