Yang Desheng, a farmer living in Lijun Village, Yongning County of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, recently joined his fellow villagers watching a film.

The movie was a 2007 comedy, depicting two young men who were brought up in rural areas but worked in a city after graduating from university. They invited two urban women to act as their girlfriends and brought them to their hometown during the Lunar New Year to try to set aside their parents' worries over their single status.

"Watching a movie on the big screen was totally different from watching it on television. The visual and audio effects are much better," said Yang.

Although it was shot about four years ago, the movie was still new to most of the villagers like Yang in the country's far-flung rural areas. In Yang's village, groups of farmers swarmed into the film projecting tent to enjoy the film.

Sending films to hundreds of millions of farmers who are scattered throughout the vast territory had not been easy, especially in the costly footage film era.

The emergence of digital film reduced the difficulty of sending films to farmers. Since 2006, China's film authorities launched a nationwide campaign to bring digital films to every village in the country.

From 2006 to 2010, more than 41,000 digital film projecting teams were formed, with about 42,000 sets of film projecting facilities.

In 2010 alone, movies were screened for free more than eight million times in the country's over 600,000 villages.

In addition, local governments in Ningxia accomplished the goal of "one digital film for one village in every one month".

"In the past, farmers could only see movies in towns. However, transportation was inconvenient and the ticket price, which ranged from 20 to 30 yuan, was too high for farmers to buy," said Ma Junli, a farmer from Touying village, Guyuan City of Ningxia.

"Nowadays, films have been brought to our village. It's much more convenient for us to enjoy a film," he said.

However, improvements are still needed. Many villagers said they could watch some old movies through TV's movie channel already. They hoped more latest blockbusters could be brought to rural areas by digital film projecting teams.