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= Xining FIRST International Film Festival =

FIRST International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Xining, China. It takes places in the last ten days of July, co-organized by The People’s Government of Xining Municipalityand China Film Critics Society. Celebrating non-mainstream films and art cinema, FIRST is the Sundanceof China. Just like Sundance, FIRST has progressed over the decades from a low-profile student film showcase to the most established Chinese independent film festival, gathering not only distinguished film stars but also major Chinse film sponsors and distributors, such as Alibaba, Tencent, and iQiyi. At FIRST, Chinese filmmakers, especially young filmmakers, who may not find a place in the traditional marketplace, may have a chance to get further sponsorship and distribution.

Founded in 2006, FIRST dedicates itself to promoting emerging filmmakers and their early works, and has served as a bridge between new film talent and the industry. Besides a competition with awards, the festival provides young filmmakers various opportunities to launch their next works, including the FIRST Training Camp where established filmmakers offer master classes, and the FIRST Financing Forum where filmmakers pitch their projects to industry professionals. Starting in 2010, the festival began to branch out internationally and has since programmed films from more than 50 countries and regions.

Each year, the festival invites acclaimed film icons, mostly Chinese filmmakers, to sit on the Jury Committee. Past Jury members include Wong Kar-wai, Jiang Wen,Gu Changwei, Lou Ye, and Tang Wei.

FIRST’s 12th edition took place between the 21st and 30th of July 2018. The festival opened with writer/director Hu Bo’s posthumous film An Elephant Sitting Still, an internationally acclaimed work born in the FIRST Financing Forum. The Jury included Chen Kuo-fu, Peyman Yazdanian, Su Chao-bin,Yang Fudong, Philippe Bober,Liao Pen-jungand Zhou Hao. Suburban Birds, directed by Qiu Sheng, won the Best Narrative Feature.

Early Years: 2006-2010
In 2006, Song Wenfounded the Chinese College Students Film Festival at Communication University of China. The following year, the festival established a brick-shaped trophy as the competition award, which according to a Chinese proverb “Pao Zhuan Yin Yu” 抛砖引玉 (“Cast a brick to attract jade”), symbolizes the act of adding momentum to the filmmaking cause.

In 2008, the festival designated voting rights to the young audience.

In 2009, Cao Baoping’s directorial debut Trouble Makers, a black comedy set in a rural village, was selected as College Students’ Favorite Film. Ironically, as the film title suggests, it made a trouble to the festival. Because of the violence and political criticism that the film contained, it had a hard time passing the Chinese censorship. The festival was embroiled in the controversy associated with this movie and was thus suspended for a year. This event indirectly led to the festival’s relocation from China’s Beijing to a more remote and sparsely populated area at the entrance of the Tibetan Plateau.

In 2010, FIRST opened its film selection to international submissions and Sercio Basso became the first foreign director to garner an award.

Relocation and Reinvention: 2011-Present
In 2011, FIRST relocated to Xining and has thus been named the Xining FIRST International Film Festival. Though overseen by the Xining Municipality, the festival now enjoys relatively more creative freedom than it had in Beijing – China’s capital and economic and political center. The new location reflects FIRST’s selection style and thus enhances the festival’s “eccentric” identity. In contrast to its rival festival such as Beijing Film Festival and Shanghai Film Festival, FIRST moves away from the media buzz. Just like Telluride Film Festival in the Rocky mountain, FIRST in Xining devotes itself to art cinema rather than commercial films. Both festivals possess an “off-center” charm and become a “destination festival” to gather hardcore cinephiles. According to Li Ziwei, FIRST chief executive and co-founder, “the air is much thinner up here, but then that’s kind of like the environment for our filmmakers… Resources are scarce, but there’s just enough to survive.”

The next year, FIRST added feature-length films into its Main Competition section and launched an official shortlist–nomination jury system.

In 2014, The Coffin in the Mountain, thoughsubmitted narrowly prior to the deadline, garnered two awards. As a low budget production, the film broke the box office record for Chinese independent cinema with a 4.35 million first-week and 10.38 million total box office.

In 2015, female filmmakers made a strong presence. Three female jurors sat on that year’s Jury Committee and five female filmmakers won awards (out of 11 total). The female jurors include film scholar Dai Jinghua, screenwriter Yan Gelingand editor Du Yuan.

In 2016, the Youth Film section and the Student Film section were merged into one single competition section and the number of awards was reduced to 10.

In 2017, The Summer is Gone (dir. Zhang Dalei,2016), My Heart Leaps Up (dir. Liu Ziwei, 2016), Looming Storm (dir. Dong Yue, 2017) and Old Beast (dir. Zhou Ziyang, 2017) were released in theaters and broke new box office records.

Main Competition
FIRST has only one competition section. There is no submission fee, nor age or nationality limit. The submission is open to the following genres: narrative features, documentaries, experimental films, animations and short films. Supporting the festival’s emphasis on young filmmakers, the narrative feature film must be one of the director’s first three films.

The Selection process follows a 3-stage shortlist-nomination jury system. In the primary selection, a group of cinephiles access and select around 60 films from all submissions. In the second stage, they pass these selections to professional film critics and researchers, who then choose and nominate films for respective awards. Eventually in the third stage, the festival screens the nominated films and invites international film masters to evaluate the artistic achievement of these films. The jury committee consists of one president and six jury members. As final-stage jurors of the competition, they will gather in Xining during the festival and vote for the winning films.

Incubation Programs
From its beginning, FIRST has always emphasized nurturing new talent in the Chinese film industry. After various reforms and experiments of different programs, FIRST has formed a four-section incubating system to serve new filmmakers in the development of their new projects: the FIRST Training Camps and the FIRST Short Film Project focus on hands-on production workshops, while the FIRST Financing Forum and the FIRST Lab lean towards script-polishing.

FIRST Training Camp
The FIRST Training Camp commits itself to nurturing new filmmakers. Each year, FIRST enrolls 9-12 young Chinese filmmakers and invites an internationally-renowned filmmaker as a mentor. The tutor organizes a ten-day camp and guides each student in producing an individual short.

Past tutors include Michael Andreen(U.S., 2012), Cristiano Bortone(Italy, 2013), Peter Newman(U.S., 2014), Shozo Ichiyama(Japan, 2015), Hong Jin Na(South Korea, 2015) and Béla Tarr(Hungary, 2017).

In 2018, Tsai Ming Liang led the training camp as a mentor, together with Béla Tarr as the academic dean.

FIRST Short Film Project
All participants of the competition, Financing Forum, and Training Camp pitch their projects to the festival committee. Finalists will receive up to 30, 000 RMB (around 4400 USD) for a 3-minute short film project.

Financing Forum
The FIRST Financing Forum connects emerging filmmakers to industry professionals, including financiers, producers, post-production experts, sales agents, distributors and film festival representatives, giving them potential access to funds.

A number of FIRST Financing Forum projects have already been completed and have made their presence at international film festival arenas. My Original Dream (dir. Hao Jie, 2015) received a Best Picture nomination at the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival, Knife in the Clear Water (dir. Wang Xuebo, 2016) was awarded in the New Currents Section at the 21st Busan International Film Festival, Looming Storm (dir. Dong Yue, 2017) won Best Actor and Best Artistic Contribution at the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival, From Where We’ve Fallen (dir. Wang Feifei, 2017) was selected for the New Directors section at the 65th San Sebastian Film Festival, and Old Beast (dir. Zhou Ziyang, 2017) gained an Asian Future Special Mention at the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival and claimed the FIPRESCI award, Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay at the 54th Golden Horse Film Festival.

FIRST Lab
In 2017, the festival initiated FIRST Lab, an incubator that provides new filmmakers systematic support in mentoring, production, and financing for their early projects. The lab provides 50, 000 RMB (around 7300 USD) to fund 1-3 selected projects every year.

Chinese Film Awards:

 * Best Director
 * Best Narrative Feature
 * Best Documentary
 * Best Short Film
 * Best Animation/Experimental Film
 * Best Performer
 * Best Artistic Originality
 * Spirit of Freedom

International Film Awards:

 * Grand Jury Prize – Feature Film
 * Grand Jury Prize – Short Film