Magnolia TV Forum looks at China's animation industry

China produces hundreds of cartoons each year. But only a handful of them ever make a profit. Industry professionals gathered at the Magnolia TV Forum on Wednesday to discuss ways to boost the country's animation industry.

The popular animation "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" was the big winner in the Chinese animation market last year.

Yang Wenyan, director of Haha TV, said, "One successful approach is the government's ban of imported cartoons during evening prime time."

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21st Century Chinese Animation Shorts in Montreal

Marcel Jean is the guest programmer. I've provided a loose English translation of what he wrote on the CQ website.

Faced with feeding it numerous television stations, China has recently become, on a quantitative scale, one of the most important producers of animation in the world. Seeking to limit imported productions from Japan and Korea, Chinese officials are basically encouraging local production by creating high production quotas and encouraging the creation of major schools, equipped with cutting-edge technology, which trains thousands of animators on a yearly basis.

In comparison to this rapid development, auteur animation film are still marginalized. As a result, the Chinese presence in large-scale international animation festivals (Annecy, Zagreb, Ottawa, Hiroshima, etc.) remains weak and, seemingly, purely diplomatic. In Annecy, this summer, for example, just one Chinese film was featured in the short competition and it was... a commercial. At this point the festival organizers can claim to have presented a Chinese film...

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