To celebrate three decades of expanding ties with Beijing, the European Union is introducing Chinese filmgoers to a cross-Europe cast of characters they may not have glimpsed before.

They include a young, idealistic Italian journalist who is killed in an explosion after he tries to expose crime and corruption, a Slovenian drug addict and the girl who tries to save him, and a 17-year-old Finn who goes on a wild, life-seeking road trip after he is diagnosed with a terminal illness.

The European Union plans to place the spotlight on these figures and their stories starting today, when Brussels launches its first EU film festival in China.

Serge Abou, who heads the Delegation of the European Commission to China, says Europe and China are celebrating their 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations throughout 2005 with a spectrum of official activities.

Of all those, the film-fest will bring the breadth of European life to the people here, he adds.

"As the curtain goes up," Ambassador Abou says, the festival, entitled "Windows on Europe," "will give viewers an unparalleled glimpse of the vibrant and diverse societies and cultures that together make up Europe."

The nine films scheduled to be screened, from southern, northern, eastern and western Europe, will present not only a kaleidoscopic look at life in the 25-member European Union, but also a series of zoom-like windows on the personalities coming to terms with their quickly changing surroundings.

"Windows on Europe" opens today at the new hi-tech French Cultural Centre (www.centreculturelpekin.com.cn) in Beijing, which is one of the three sponsors of Europe's first film festival in China, along with the European Commission and the Luxembourg Presidency of the European Council. It will run until May 16.

The rapidly growing EU began organizing film festivals at home to create a matrix of deeper understanding among founding and newer member states, and then launched the films on a cross-continental circuit of festivals to boost a global dialogue of different cultures.

"Windows on Europe" covers comedies and social dramas, and includes films from three new EU countries -- Slovenia, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- in addition to four dynamic films by women directors, Abou says.

The films will be screened in their original language, and with subtitles in Chinese and English, in order to attract as wide a variety as possible of Chinese and Western cinema fans, says the centre's Cecile Barbier.

Barbier adds "most of the movies have been carefully selected from award-winning films that have participated in hundreds of festivals across Europe or around the world."

New wave directors

The films, which range from panoramas to close-ups of Europe and its members as they undergo myriad metamorphoses, include the following:

Director Marco Tullio Giordana's Cento Passi, or The Hundred Steps, an Italian film which recounts the real-life quest of an idealist/journalist to use his local radio station to name and denounce organized crime leaders. When the young reporter dies in an explosion, the police, suspiciously, classify the death as an accident or suicide.

Dorothee Van den Berghe's A Girl -- Meisje, a joint Belgian, Dutch and French production that weaves together the tales of three generations of women and their passion for life and love.

Hannu Tuomainen's One-way Ticket to Mombasa, a Finnish-Norwegian film which traces how a prognosis of imminent death changes the life of a young Scandinavian and his friends as they take an "anything-goes" trip through northernmost Europe.

Hanna Antonina Wojcik Slak's Slepa Pega, or Blind Spot, a Slovenian film that tracks how a girl tries to help a friend break his heroin addiction, and begins to lose her own freedom in the process.

Director Aisling Walsh's Song for a Raggy Boy, co-produced by Irish, Spanish, British and Danish partners, a film spotlighting a free-thinking teacher's struggle with abusive Roman Catholic priests who preside over a reform school in 1930's Ireland.

"Many of these films are by new-generation European directors who present stories of their lives or their homelands in a new way," Barbier says.

Taking these new wave directors on an around-the-world tour via film-festivals is aimed at helping them find an audience beyond the borders of their homelands. Barbier says some of the films "focus on dark social problems, events in history that previously have been blacked out, or new trends in art ... and will give audiences a view of the West that they cannot find in American movies, which are marked by big budgets and special effects."

Close ties

Bringing the multi-hued visions of Europe's newest wave of filmmakers to China continues a recent trend of broadening ties between the young in the East and the West.

Last spring, Paris invited a number of Chinese digital music DJs and alternative bands to showcase their art as part of the Year of Chinese Culture in France, and this summer will sponsor a series of cross-China shows by cutting-edge French musicians to highlight the Year of French Culture in China.

Similarly, the Canadian Embassy recently hosted performances by Quebec-based electronic music composers in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Shenzhen in a miniature version of Montreal's Mutek Festival (www.mutek.ca).

The embassy's cultural attache, Ian Burchedt, says, "Canada wants to introduce innovative artists to China ... and we are looking at wider collaboration between Chinese and Canadian artists."

He explains that "Chinese-Canadian ties are becoming more comprehensive, and this is presenting new opportunities to step up cultural exchanges."

Barbier says the "Windows on Europe" festival will augment the constantly changing cycle of French cinema showcased each evening at the Cultural Centre, and adds that May's line-up of films will also include two Russian classics.

(China Daily May 11, 2005)