At the festival, China's top film gala, people were fascinated by "The Death of Wang Bo," which follows the life of a renowned poet of Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), and began to take an interest in TV movies.

The production, directed by Zheng Dasheng, shared the award with another made-for-TV film, "Come on, Let's Go" by young director Guan Hu.

It was the first time that the award, which had been established a year earlier but had found no winners, was presented.

TV movies, a new genre for the country, started being produced in China only three years ago. But the small industry immediately took off. Last year a total of 102 TV movies were produced.

"What is more important is that the quality of many of these productions is good," said Yue Yang, the director of the TV film department of China Central Television (CCTV)'s Movie Channel.

According to Yue, as many as 50 to 60 percent of the 102 productions have the potential to draw large audiences, and 20 percent are "first-rate" productions.

"TV movies are becoming increasingly popular and have begun to exert an influence in China," said Zhang Weiping, also from CCTV's Movie Channel.

What's a TV movie?

Even today, insiders are still arguing over what constitutes a TV movie.

Although the genre has a history of nearly 40 years in the United States, it is a tough task to define it in China.

It is a rather ambiguous form - "neither-fish-nor-fowl," fitting neither the criteria of TV dramas nor of actual films.

What these productions are basically low-cost movies that the TV industry entrusts film producers to shoot and which are mainly shown on TV.

According to Zhang Weiping, CCTV's Movie Channel has been the pioneer in making TV movies.

The only such national channel in China, it immediately won wide popularity among TV viewers when it was opened in 1996.

The Channel shows six films every day. It purchases the TV copyrights of most domestic movies and also buys a great many foreign films every year.

But this still isn't enough to meet the demands of the channel, despite the fact that it usually shows every movie several times, with a gap between showings.

Owing to the slump in the Chinese movie industry, no more than 80 movies are made in China every year.

In 1998, the channel operators found that they were running out of new movies.

"Faced with this problem, we decided to make 'movies' ourselves," said Zhang.

According to Zhang, the channel's first TV movie, also the country's first, was "All Is Well," directed by Qi Jian in late 1998, while the first such movie to be shown on TV was "The Memory of Winter," directed by Yang Yazhou.

So far the channel has produced more than 300 TV films.

Most of the films have been warmly welcomed by channel viewers.

According to Zhang, the view rating of many telefilms hits 2 percent at prime time.

And they have brought handsome returns to the channel.

Generally, the cost of producing such a movie is around 400,000 yuan (US$48,000), and commercials broadcast before and after the screening of such a movie, bring the channel twice that amount in revenues.

More significantly, telefilms have helped improve the profile of the channel and its perceived viewer image.

A controversial genre

While most audiences enjoy TV movies, film industry insiders are divided in their views of the new genre.

Many movie experts regard TV films as nothing but teleplays, and doubt that the genre will develop.

Zhang still remembers the first few times she sent out invitations to film directors to help shoot TV movies.

Many directors declined her invitation.

It was considered to be beneath their dignity to shoot tele-films, which they saw essentially as nothing more than TV dramas.

"In the West, TV movies are a thing of the past. So why should we start making them?" said a film director who asked not to be named.

Guan Hu, the director of "Come On, Let's Go" admitted that he was reluctant to join the crew at first.

"But later when I realized that TV films are a kind of film, I no longer felt embarrassed," Guan said.

Low-cost films, even when they are TV movies, have their allure.

The average television movie may cost as little as 400,000 yuan (US$48,000) and no more than 1.5 million yuan (US$181,000), while the production of the average feature film runs to as much as 10 times the latter figure.

An interesting phenomenon is that among the film directors who have shot TV films in the past three years, most are young.

With the slump in local movie industry, many young directors have little chance of shooting their own films.

Making TV films gives them the chance to try themselves and keep up with developments in the industry.

"Although making TV films is in some ways different from making movies, it provides opportunities to practise anyway," said Zhang.

By providing funds for small-budget productions to hungry, innovative young minds to create cheap yet creative productions, Zhang believes the Movie Channel is helping to nurture talent for the Chinese film industry.

In addition, the practice is raising productivity.

The first year the Movie Channel decided to shoot TV films, it attracted more than 500 scripts, most of which were well-developed, with good story lines with the potential to attract viewers.

If it were not for the advent of TV films, most of these screen plays would have died on the writers' desks.

However, industry insiders fear that viewer-oriented telefilms may result in the neglect of creativity.

"Feature releases can go to extremes sometimes, but TV movies cannot. View ratings are closely related to commercials, and that means that TV movies cannot afford to be too innovative.

"Most of them go for the middle both in story line and in dialogue to satisfy the average viewer," said Zheng Dasheng.

(China Daily May 14, 2002)