Chapter 116 Seminar and Initiative
After taking a group photo, the celebration banquet officially ended.

Liu Zhou thought that after the celebration banquet, he would have some free time, but unexpectedly, more things came up.

At the end of last year, China officially became a member of the World Trade Organization.

In the WTO accession negotiations at that time, the cultural industry was the first to be affected.

Under pressure from Hollywood groups, starting from 2003, the mainland will introduce a number of Hollywood films every year in the form of profit sharing.

In order to cope with the impact of Hollywood movies, the highest department in charge of the film industry will organize a Chinese film seminar, and Liu Zhou was specifically asked to attend.

The seminar was of a very high standard, with the heads of various associations in the film industry, directors of 13 state-owned film studios, several well-known private film and television company owners, and several well-known directors in attendance.

In the past, Liu Zhou was invited to attend various meetings, but he declined most of them on the grounds of his lack of experience.

Liu Zhou will participate in some exchange meetings organized by the Central Academy of Drama and the Beijing Film Academy.

Although the Central Academy of Drama and the Beijing Film Academy will compete in various aspects, they are generally in the same boat in the entire film and television industry.

Liu Zhou is a person of academic origin. The Central Academy of Drama and the Beijing Film Academy are his mother's home and backers. He has always paid great attention to maintaining good relations with the two institutions.

If the Shanghai Drama Academy wasn't so far away in Shanghai, Liu Zhou would have to try to build connections there.

The Central Academy of Drama and the Shanghai Theatre Academy are of the same origin!

Some other meetings can be postponed, but Liu Zhou cannot postpone this seminar.

Although he knew that he would just be there for the sake of appearance and that he would have little say in such a high-level meeting, since he was called, he had to do his part.

Being able to just make a cameo appearance proves your status in the industry, but many people don't even have the qualifications to just make a cameo appearance.

When Liu Zhou arrived at the meeting place, there were already quite a few people in the conference room.

Liu Zhou didn't know many people, but many people knew him at the scene.

Now who doesn’t know that Liu Zhou is the hen that lays golden eggs?

Although some people had met Liu Zhou at the celebration banquet not long ago, they still came over enthusiastically to talk to him when they saw Liu Zhou now.

What Liu Zhou didn't expect was that Wang Zhongjun actually came over and greeted Liu Zhou with a smile.

"Director Liu, long time no see."

Although the relationship between the two parties was tacitly understood, they did not openly tear each other apart. Liu Zhou also did not want to hit someone who smiled at him, and responded with a smile:
"Mr. Wang, long time no see."

If someone who didn't know the inside story saw the two of them, they would think they were good friends who hadn't seen each other for many years.

"Director Liu, the mainland is about to face the impact of Hollywood movies. I think we should unite, strengthen cooperation, and look forward to everything."

"Mr. Wang is absolutely right. We should unite to deal with the impact of Hollywood blockbusters."

When Wang Zhongjun saw that Liu Zhou accepted his kindness, the smile on his face brightened and he immediately started chatting with Liu Zhou enthusiastically.

Liu Zhou noticed from the corner of his eye that Feng, who was sitting behind him, had darker and darker pants, and that he was chatting more and more happily with Wang Zhongjun.

"Director Liu, let's let go of what happened before. We can work together next time."

"Well, definitely next time!" Liu Zhou said sincerely.

Then Wang Zhongjun also said goodbye and left, walking towards Feng Kuazi.

Liu Zhou noticed that he didn't know what Wang Zhongjun said to Feng Kuzi, but Feng Kuzi's face looked much better.

It seems that Wang Zhongjun's method of calming people's hearts is quite clever. No wonder he can control Feng Kuazi so well.

Wang Zhongjun is a typical smiling tiger. Even though he seems to be the first to show goodwill to Liu Zhou and say that he wants to put past grievances behind him.

But Liu Zhou knew clearly that Huayi was still weak at that time and its status in the industry was not very high.

If Huayi is the number one private film and television company in the mainland, Wang Zhongjun would not even be lenient towards Stephen Chow, and his behavior was very ugly, so he would not be lenient towards Liu Zhou.

However, if it is profitable to cooperate with Huayi, Liu Zhou will certainly not refuse.

In this life, whether Huayi can still become the number one private film and television company is still a question!

Not long after, some well-known mainland directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Shishi and Tian Zhuangzhuang arrived one after another. After everyone was present, the leaders also appeared on stage.

Liu Zhou originally thought that this seminar would be another rather theoretical meeting, but he did not expect that it would contain so much substantive information.

First, of course, the leader spoke, mainly talking about some specific details reached with Hollywood. Then he changed the subject and mentioned the need to accelerate and deepen the market-oriented reform of the film industry, with a focus on the reform of cinema chains.

Hearing this, Liu Zhou couldn't help but become serious.

If Liu Zhou remembers correctly, the reform document for mainland cinema chains will be officially issued this year, and then the current regional restrictions on cinema chains will be completely broken, and mainland cinema chains will begin to be regularized. At this time, cinemas in this period are very heavily protected by regional protection, and all kinds of incredible things are emerging one after another.

Stealing box office revenue is child's play. Some theaters openly cooperate with pirates and even directly withhold box office revenue and don't give you any.

After the theater chain reform, this situation will be much better.

If your cinema does not join the theater chain, you will not be able to get the film source. If you join, you will have to accept unified management and will not be able to act lawless as before.

Then it was the turn of the film studios to speak. Except for China Film Group and Shanghai Film Group, the heads of the other studios were almost all complaining and wanted more funding from above.

This made the leaders above feel ashamed!
Damn, I just said I wanted to pursue marketization, and now you come crying for funding. Isn’t this a slap in my face?

The leaders above ignored them. Market-oriented reforms have been going on for several years, but they have not been able to change their mindset and actively save themselves. They deserve the hard times they are living now.

Afterwards, Zhang Yimou and Chen Shishi, two of the leading figures in the domestic director circle, also made speeches.

In later generations, there are always people who call them the three great directors, but now Feng Kuzi can't be compared with these two at all, even Liu Zhou at this time can't compare with them.

Director Zhang's remarks were very objective. He believed that the current mainland film industry was relatively weak and it was difficult to withstand the impact of Hollywood blockbusters.

But he thinks this is also an opportunity that can force us to make progress. Not only that, he thinks we should also shoot blockbusters with our own characteristics and actively go out.

Compared with Director Zhang's pragmatism, poet Chen's speech was more grand, with gorgeous words and full of confidence, worthy of being a person who can recite poetry.

Liu Zhou keenly noticed that poet Chen seemed to have some thoughts about the fact that he was not the first director to stand up and speak.

To be honest, Liu Zhou was quite surprised that poet Chen did not directly recite Xin Qiji's "Poetry of Breaking the Formation" this time.

Afterwards, Tian Zhuangzhuang elaborated on some of his views from a teaching perspective. Although Feng Kuazi did not look very good, he was very good at talking to his superiors. Although his speech did not contain much practical information, it made the leaders above feel comfortable listening.

At this time, the leader directly called his name:

"Liu Zhou, what do you young directors think?"

Liu Zhou originally thought that he was just here to make up the numbers, and had not prepared to speak at all. However, thinking of some film situations in later generations, he pondered for a while and said:
“First of all, I agree with Director Zhang’s opinion that the film industry in Europe and Hollywood started much earlier than ours, and now the gap between us and them is getting bigger and bigger.

This is not only a gap in film concepts, but also a gap in the film industry. Of course, we can now say that there is no film industry at all.

"Titanic", which was released a few years ago, is the culmination of the Hollywood film industry. When I watched this movie, it had a great impact on me.

I feel like a lot of people in the industry don’t even know how this movie got made.

In the future, there will be more and more industrial blockbusters like this one in Hollywood, but we will still stick to the position of art films, and even have a certain prejudice against commercial films.

The consequence of this is that the mainland's film market will be completely dominated by Hollywood films, just like Taiwan.

So as Director Zhang said, we also need to shoot our own blockbusters, while also paying attention to special effects and gradually building up our own film industry.

We have a population of more than one billion, and as people's lives get better, the demand for watching movies will also increase.

The potential of our film market in the future is absolutely huge, and only when commercial films become mainstream can this potential be realized.”

After Liu Zhou finished speaking, he sat down and let out a long sigh.

He has said everything he needs to say, and he can't do anything about it as long as his leader listens to it.

It has been six years since his rebirth, and he has achieved some success in the directing industry. His ideas have also changed. He no longer just pursues becoming a big director, but also hopes to make some contribution to the mainland film industry.

However, Liu Zhou noticed that the leader above looked calm and nothing could be seen.

The people below began to discuss Liu Zhou's speech in a low voice. Some people thought he was exaggerating, while others thought he was talking nonsense and taking the wrong path.

Liu Zhou didn't care about these people's opinions. It was difficult to change some people's ideas that had been formed over decades.

But there were also people who agreed with what Liu Zhou said. Liu Zhou saw Han Shanping looking at him with admiration, and Zhang Yimou also smiled at him.

The seminar lasted nearly three hours and was declared over at almost noon.

Liu Zhou originally wanted to make friends with Zhang Yimou, but as soon as the meeting was over, he left in a hurry.

Only then did he remember that "Hero" hadn't even been finished filming yet!
In this regard, Liu Zhou can only look for another opportunity next time.

After returning to his residence, Liu Zhou thought of Wang Zhongjun's smiling face. He felt that he could not just wait for others to take the initiative. He could also intercept some of their future luck.

In later generations, Huayi relied on two legs: TV series and movies. TV series mainly relied on Zhang Jizhong, while movies mainly relied on Feng Kuazi.

There is no way to do it with Zhang Jizhong, and Liu Zhou’s current studio is not making TV dramas, so we can think of a solution with Feng Kuzi.

Liu Zhou and Feng Kuzi had conflicts to begin with, so Liu Zhou did not feel any psychological pressure at all when taking action against him.

(End of this chapter)