Of all the wonderful ways to spend a summer night, watching an outdoor screening of a popular movie is hard to beat.

Beijing residents can do so when, after six years in New York, the Tribeca Film Festival comes to Beijing for two nights, July 10-11.

The Tribeca 798 Film Festival will focus on special screenings of the film Planet B-Boy by director Benson Lee, a powerful documentary about the vibrant global resurgence of break-dancing, which had its World Premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and was developed through the support of the Tribeca All-Access program.

The event, designed to give Beijing a small taste of the Tribeca Film Festival, will open with a reception and include free community outdoor screenings of the film and a block party on opening night that will take place in the 798 district, an artist-friendly neighborhood similar to the Tribeca area in New York City.

Tribeca 798 Film Festival Beijing is a partnership between Tribeca Enterprises, William Morris Agency and China Interactive Media Group, all of whom were interested to bring a film event to Beijing that embraces local audiences and the Chinese filmmaking community.

"We are thrilled to have the opportunity to help create a platform for independent film in China and to strengthen the ties between the Chinese film community and the Tribeca Film Festival," said Jon Patricof, chief operating officer of Tribeca Enterprises.

"This partnership helps further the Tribeca Film Festival's mission to expand the audience for independent film and to provide artists with unique platforms to reach new audiences," Patricof said.

"With films from China having played a major role in the Tribeca Film Festival's first six years - and having won several of our major awards in the bargain - we're happy to begin this new international collaboration," noted Peter Scarlet, Artistic Director of the Tribeca Film Festival.

"Planet B-boy originally started as a concept in the Tribeca Film Institute All Access program at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005. Never in my wildest dreams could I have predicted that two years later we would be showing Planet B-boy at the Tribeca Film Festival to an audience of 7,000 people at an outdoor screening outside of the World Trade Center area, let alone at another outdoor screening on the other side of the world in Beijing," said director Benson Lee.

"The Tribeca Film Festival has assisted Planet B-boy in so many ways to help make our concept into a reality. For that we are deeply grateful," he said.

In the past six years, the Tribeca Film Festival has screened 18 feature-length and short films from Chinese filmmakers, four of which have received awards at the festival.

The Tribeca Film Festival was founded in 2002 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff as a response to the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The festival is anchored in Tribeca and takes place in additional neighborhoods throughout Manhattan featuring screenings, special events, concerts, a family street fair and panel discussions.

China Interactive Media Group (CIMG), founded in 2000, is a distributor of lifestyle content in China. Committed to a comprehensive multimedia strategy, CIMG currently publishes fashion and entertainment magazines, creates syndicated television programming and operates marketing services.

CIMG's founder Hong Huang, an experienced media executive, is the author of one of China's most popular blogs, generating more than 44 million hits on Sina.com since its beginning in 2006.
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(Xinhua News Agency June 26, 2007)