The 2010 MIDA Panorama took place from June 7th to June 15th with showings at the Broadband International Cineplex, Huan Yi Studio City, Metropol Cinema, UME Cineplex. Some 44 of the best documentaries from the world were shown, causing a sensation this June with nearly ten thousand viewers in the past 9 days in the biggest turn out for documentary films in China.
1, From Planning to Reality
For Chinese film directors their biggest wish is to have the opportunity to show their works to the public and see their audience at the premier. Lackluster turnouts are not limited to Shanghai in the past. Some said that Guangzhou Documentary Festival had some showings that had only one or two audiences and this year's Beijing Chinese Documentary Week had low audience turnouts as well. Experts in the industry believe this is caused by long-term neglect of audiences at film festivals in China.
The MIDA Panorama was preceded by three years of DocuChina Cinema Program. The DocuChina Cinema Program was well received in the past three years with close to 1500 registered members. The DocuChina Cinema Program utilized bi-weekly showings and allowed directors to be on site. It averaged 20 showings per year to about 250 viewers per showing. The advantage of this method is that it helped to create a core group of documentary viewers but the disadvantage of it is that it lacked reach due to its bi-weekly schedule and caused it to become more niche than mainstream.
Events like the DocuChina Cinema Program are difficult to make enough profits to sustain itself. However, our original goal was not to just make profits but rather to change the fact that currently there are no large scale and continuous film festivals in China. To change this situation would require us to better present the content and culture of documentary films to our audience.
Therefore, we decided to use venues such as Xintiandi, and other upscale locations to help establish a brand image and brand documentary films as a high culture product. One can interpret the MIDA event as a test case to help establish long-term viewership of documentary films in Shanghai.
We've also analyzed the audience from the DocuChina Cinema Program and found most were aged between 30 to 40 years old, are predominately white collared and female. This is in contrast to SMG's Documentary Channel which has a larger male audience, larger than its sports channel.
We have now set our goal beyond establishing a small niche market for documentary films and want to reach out to the wider audience. The onus is on us, the documentary producers and marketers to bring the best documentary films to our audience and this brought about the MIDA Panorama.
2, About the MIDA Panorama
MIDA has caught the attention of many sectors after its public showing of 44 documentary films. These films have won major awards from around the world and the quality of these films is superlative. Chris McDonald, festival director of Hot Docs commented, "I've only seen a third of all the excellent films." Critics have given high marks at this year's MIDA event with praises such as, "the best documentaries you can see", "a collection of the highest level of documentary films", "unsurpassable standards", and “this summer give yourself over to documentaries", etc.
The venues showing these 44 documentary films with over 70 showings are all located in the busiest areas of Shanghai such as: the Broadband International Cineplex, Huan Yi Studio City, Metropol Cinema, UME Cineplex. Even though the MIDA event coincides with the Shanghai International Film Festival and World Cup Football, the organizers of MIDA still managed to receive more than 2000 booking requests within two days before the opening day of June 1st.
Tickets for films such as: The Bund, KJ, Travelling with Yoshitomo Nara, Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids, and Last Train Home were sold out. The screening attendance for others were above 70% which pleasantly surprised us as well as theater owners, who had their doubts at first. However, after witnessing the massive attendance the manager of Metropol Cinema said: "MIDA's ticket sales exceeded those of some Hollywood movies being shown. The manager of UME Cineplex was ecstatic over the sold out tickets and packed seats.
3. What MIDA Panorama Reveals
How to interpret the likes and dislikes of China's movie goers? There are some films where we successfully predicted a strong showing such as the film Travelling with Yoshitomo Nara. Its popularity revealed an interesting trend on cultural consumption. Many Chinese audiences do not make a distinction between genres such as documentaries. They tend to look for movies that match with their own interests, and backgrounds. For example, male viewers tend to favor documentaries dealing with war such as Alpha Diaries, and older audiences preferred movies dealing with topics on Intellectual Youths such as Daughter from Yan'an. Viewers in China tend to base their selections on their sensibilities and this is a revelation to be taken into account for the next MIDA event's selection of films.
Although this is a fine start, the Chinese documentary film market is still lagging behind those of other countries. The Amsterdam Film Festival last year sold 170,000 movie tickets where as MIDA sold less than 10,000 tickets. This is tough to beat and without the support of the movie goers Chinese documentary makers may never see true success within their own country.
Can we create a market for Chinese documentaries? The makers of the documentary KJ is confident that they can as they prepare the launch of the film domestically. A good documentary properly packaged and marketed will find an audience here. The prerequisite is to recognize how to best show documentaries in theaters.
The 2010 MIDA Panorama's ticket sale ratio was 72%, the top 10 films are:
NO.1: The Bund
NO.2: Travelling with Yoshitomo Nara
NO.3: KJ
NO.4: Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
NO.5: Yokohama Mary
NO.6: Last Train Home
NO.7: Summer in Narita
NO.8: Stranded - The Andes Plane Crash Survivors
NO.9: Love and Death in Shanghai
NO.10: Fortune Teller
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