48 Hour Film Project set for China - and the world

The 48 Hour Film Project sets its sights on China over the next month and organizers are expecting big things from a nation with the fastest-growing film industry in the world.

Aspiring filmmakers in the capital Beijing have been given July 30 as the date they must face the 48 Hour challenge (http://www.48hourfilm.com) - those who sign up for the event must write, shoot, edit and score a film in 48 hours.

Hong Kong will be the next Chinese city to give the competition a shot, with its weekend set down for sometime in October.

Last year almost 40,000 filmmakers from 76 cities around the world entered the competition with 3,000 films being produced. A selection of the winning 2009 entries were screened as part of a special program at the prestigious Cannes International Film Festival in May - outside of the Oscars, the biggest event there is on the yearly cinema calendar.

This year's competition started in April and will continue through to November. For the first time, South American and African cities have been added to the calendar - with the event running in Lima, Casablanca and Johannesburg.

Entrants in the competition are on the Friday night presented with a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre - and then they can let the cameras roll. Organizers then select a local cinema to screen the results during the following week.

Each film must be no shorter than four minutes in duration - and no longer than seven minutes. Organizers then select a judging panel in each city taken from "film and video professionals. The city winners then face off against each other for an international award. In the past judges have included actors such as Julianne Moore.

"The 48 Hour Film Project is a rite of passage for today's filmmakers because it focuses squarely on creativity and filmmaking expertise,'' Mark Ruppert, executive producer of 48 Hour Film Project Inc told Relaxnews.

"All of the excuses of not having the right script, the right actor, etc., go out the window. The only question is: Can your team come up with a good story and execute it on film/video in two days? This year, more than 3,500 teams are going to try - 2010 is a big year for the 48 Hour Film Project because we will be in 89 cities around the world.''

For a calendar of weekends and cities, log on to http://www.48hourfilm.com

MS