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COMMERCE: CROSSING BORDERS
More mainland shingles hit the Asian Film Market with financial muscle and post-Games confidence
BEIJING
The Chinese are coming to the Pusan Intl. Film Festival in numbers never seen before, riding a wave of confidence inspired by the growing muscle of its domestic industry and Olympic-fueled optimism.
The message they bring to their Asian peers at Pusan is this: Chinese cinema is coming out of the arthouse and into a multiplex near you.
Production has been slow in recent months because of the Olympics, which has forced the film biz, and indeed most other forms of cultural activity, to a standstill as the government tried to ensure as smooth an event as possible.
The Olympics did much to boost China's profile in the Asian region, and the film biz is hoping to piggyback on some of that feeling at Pusan. The overall health of the Chinese film biz is robust, strengthened by growing B.O. receipts and higher-quality, locally produced fare. This includes big movies like John Woo's "Red Cliff' and "Forbidden Kingdom," and producers are...