The ongoing Hollywood Chinese Film Festival, celebrating 100 years of Chinese film, has ended its North American run in Los Angeles. The first of its kind to be held in LA, the heart of celluloid entertainment, the event was jointly sponsored by Colombia College Hollywood and Hollywood International (China) Group Co. Ltd and was supported by China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).

The festival opened with a gala event in Beverly Hills on September 16. More than 500 people, including celebrities and film buffs, attended the event. Some of China's big names in film who attended included action superstar Jackie Chan, Eric Tsang Chi-Wai – veteran Hong Kong actor and Chairman of the Hong Kong Performing Artists Guild – and actress Wu Junmei.

The festival showcased a choice selection of about 10 of China's best films, from the 1930s through to the 90s, including Hong Kong director Peter Chan Ho-sun's Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), My Memories of Old Beijing (1982) by Wu Yigong, and Angels of the Street (1937) by Yuan Muzhi starring the late, Ms Zhou Xuan.

A film set in 1930s China, Angels of the Street depicts the life of down-and-outs scraping an existence at the bottom of the social ladder. It was highly praised by French film historian George Sadoul and dubbed the forerunner of the new realism genre.

Zhou Wei, one of the organizers of the festival and Zhou Xuan's son, said: “When American audiences watch films like Angles of the Street, they'll probably be amazed that China was able to create such great movies that early.”

Mainland filmmaker Feng Xiaoning had three of his films on Chinese resistance war against Japanese aggressors selected for the festival: Lover's Grief over the Yellow River (1999), Purple Sunset (2001) and Ga Da Mei Lin (2002). Born in Jiangsu Province in November 1954, Feng graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982 along with internationally renowned fifth generation directors such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. He is the only one of the three who has worked with the war genre consistently over the last decade.

The festival started its North American tour in Vancouver, Canada, in early September before moving to LA. According to sources with Hollywood International (China) Group Co. Ltd, the festival will make its way back to China for an awards and closing ceremony to be held some time in November.

(China.org.cn by Li Xiao, September 27, 2005)