BEIJING: The Beijing Film Academy, one of China’s top film schools, has launched a training program offering scholarships to young filmmakers from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries to study cinema in China.

Operating under a quota system, the scholarships will be offered annually over the next three years, it was stated at the recently concluded SCO Film Festival held In Qingdao, Shandong province. Nearly 60 movies including five from Pakistan were screened more than 260 times in 10 cinemas around Qingdao for nearly 50,000 people during the five-day festival.”It was the first time that most of the movies had been screened in China.

It gives Chinese audiences a chance to see films with unique characteristics that represent the respective countries’ cinematic culture,” says Sun Xianghui, director of the China Film Archive. Other than the awards, plans for a series of projects aimed at developing cinematic exchanges among the eight SCO member states and four observer nations were unveiled.

The China Film Co Ltd, the country’s largest State-owned studio, launched a project to invite movie regulators and industry insiders from the SCO states to attend seminars aimed at introducing the Chinese movie industry and showcasing its latest filmmaking technology.

The latest SCO project was also unveiled at the film festival. A co-production between teams from China and Pakistan, The Journey is a film inspired by a true story that took place on the Karakoram Highway, one of the world’s highest paved roads, constructed by the two countries. Penned by award-winning scriptwriter Wang Haiping, the film will be shot in Qingdao, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Pakistan, and is scheduled to open by the end of 2019.