Quotes from the Hong Kong Day Seminar at AFM

Day 2 of the  American Film Market (AFM®) saw the opening ceremony for this year’s Hong Kong Day. Jean Prewitt, President and CEO of IFTA and AFM’s Managing Director, Jonathan Wolf were joined by Ralph Chow and Stella Poon from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. The official ribbon cutting was followed later in the day with a seminar entitled ‘Hong Kong: Your Ideal Platform to the Co-Production Market in China’ which focused on the benefits of co-producing in Hong Kong.

Below are some key 

RALPH CHOW - Regional Director, Americas – Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC)

“In addition to the talent, services, expertise and business acumen that Hong Kong has acquired during a century of filmmaking, we are also the ideal springboard to the Chinese mainland market and its potential audience of more than 1billion moviegoers. In fact nowadays there are a lot of the middle-income class group who have tremendous spending power. A rough estimation is that there are at least 300 million middle class income group people in China. Probably the same population size as those in America. So they are all having tremendous spending power and they aspire the lifestyle of the rest of us, they are ready to spend a lot of money on movies.”

“Everyone is now looking at the Chinese movie-market. As well as our fine, great location and also the cultural integration with the mainland, we also have an ace up our sleeve in the form of the a free-trade pact, called the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). Among other things CEPA is a free-trade agreement that provides Hong Kong service providers with preferential assets to mainland markets, this includes, film services, such as video and audio productions, and also distribution services and even setting up modern cinemas on the mainland.”

HOWARD FRUMES – Partner, Alexander, Lawrence, Frumes & Labowitz, LLP

“In order to work in Hong Kong, you need to narrow someone or a group of someones from Hong Kong who have done, in their own way, what you are trying to do. Who are sophisticated now about the Chinese film market and in some ways they are the ones that have created the Chinese film business, although it’s changed a great deal in the last 5 years. They were the incubator for the entire Chinese film system and they not only know the Western approach to filmmaking but are now experts on the Chinese method of filmmaking, film distribution and dealing with the governmental issues. This is the key in many ways to making films in China.”