Recapping the 2010 Tudou Video Festival

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This year, a thousand people attended the 2010 Tudou Video Festival, which was held in an arts complex in Beijing, China.

It mixed the Oscars with a little bit of Sundance and Cannes combined. In a CNN recap, you’ll learn how fabulous the event was below. Except instead of red, the carpet was green. Instead of fancy designer dresses, the attire was a combo of grunge, flannel and faded blue jeans. And instead of airing on television or in movie theaters, the nominated films came straight from the Internet. Welcome to the 3rd annual 2010 Tudou Video Festival, held over the weekend in the Chinese capital.

Tudou.com (which means “couch potato” in Chinese) is China’s first, and now one of the country’s largest (aside from rival Youku.com), video sharing portals. Launched in 2005, Tudou follows a similar model to Google Inc.’s video Web site, YouTube.

Gary Wang

Tudou.com co-founder Gary Wang

Tudou also hosts videos that push the boundaries of sensitivity on the country’s censored Internet. It was the first portal, for example, to show the “War of Internet Addiction,” a 64-minute computer animation film on government Web controls, Tudou co-founder Gary Wang said. The film, produced by a network engineer who goes by the name “Sexy Corn,” won the top award at this year’s festival.

Aspiring filmmakers, actresses and actors, animators and amateur videographers from around China (all mostly in their mid- to late-20s) showcased their work at the festival held at an art complex in Beijing, with aorund one thousand people in attendance.

Of the more than 5,000 entries, 94 made it to the final round of nominations.

“Two to three years ago, the works were really amateur,” Wang said. “Now people are taking it much more seriously.”

Now, traditional media along with advertisers are starting to take the content on Tudou much more seriously, too. Hung Huang, a blogger experiences working as a journalist in China won the “Golden Camera Award,” and Hitch-hike Diary won the documentary category. The film, by a video blogger who goes by the name Tomato-Han Da Ka, is the story of a hiking trip on the border regions of Sichuan province and Tibet.

Sexy Corn

Sexy Corn, creator of “War of Internet Addiction,” which won the festival’s top award. The film was shot entirely within the game World of Warcraft.

He is the producer of the “War of Internet Addiction,” an animated film shot entirely within the video game, World of Warcraft (it is a filming technique known as machinima, which involves making animated movies using real-time images recorded from video games). The movie won the top award at the Tudou festival.

The film centers on World of Warcraft gamers who are frustrated that a new version of the game was banned in China. However it also contains deeper themes about Internet freedom in the country. It has been viewed millions of times.

Video Link: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/8w0z0Q_TAQI/

Cai Chen-Shu:

Cai Chen-Shu (Video Blogger Name: Love Vacation)

Cai Chen-Shu of Taiwan won an award for “It Seems to Rain,” a film about a teenage boy struggling to find his identity as a homosexual. Cai Chen-Shu grew up in the aboriginal Amei Tribe in Hualian, a county on the east coast of Taiwan. He produced his film, “It Seems to Rain,” for a senior project to obtain his university degree. Cai won best director at the film festival.

“It Seems to Rain” centers on a high school boy and his struggles to accept himself as a homosexual. “I have always wanted to make a movie about same sex relationships and how a teenager becomes comfortable with his own identity.

Cai said the film received a lot of criticism when it was first posted online in China because “the movie is from Taiwan and those kinds of things.” He now works for a film production company in Taipei. “I don’t consider myself a movie producer at all,” he said. “It was just an assignment.” However Cai says one day he does hope to become a famous director of a disaster film.

Video Link: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/O_GQhEIvCsA/

Zhou Nan

Zhou Nan

Zhou Nan is soon to graduate from the Beijing Film Academy. When Zhou Nan told his parents he wanted to make films, they cried. The 27-year-old from a small village in Inner Mongolia was studying at a science and technology university at the time. “In China, families always think learning art is not best for a clever boy,” he said. “Learning science is the best way for a clever boy to find his place in the world.”

Zhou ended up pursuing his filmmaking dream. He is now studying at the Beijing Film Academy. And his 22-minute film, “Lost in Paradise,” was nominated for best drama at the Tudou awards ceremony. The film is about a driver who loses 10 patients he is taking to a mental institution when he stops to see a prostitute along the way.

Zhou says his next film will center on love between parents and their son in honor of the support his family eventually gave him to pursue his dream. “Crying is not weak,” he said. “”Crying is because we are moved by each other.”

Read more: 2010 Tudou Video Festival awards: The best of China’s online films | CNNGo.com

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